Hey, Magic spikes!

 Another standard cycle has come and gone. It's a whole new format since I'd qualified for Milwaukee on Mono White about five months ago. With several new decks appearing as viable options, including Izzet Spellementals, an upgraded Green Landfall, and the Rhythm lists, my choice for this Regional Championship was the longtime number one option before the release of Lorwyn Eclipsed. With a diversified field and, by nature, less sideboard hate directed at Lessons, we're afforded more freedom to terrorize just about any matchup with the potent synergy of Artist's Talent and Monument to Endurance, backed by a wealth of answers in damage based removal and counterspells. And... Ancestral Recall, apparently...

THE DECK

𝚂̶𝚎̶𝚛̶𝚒̶𝚘̶𝚞̶𝚜̶𝚕̶𝚢̶,̶ ̶𝚠̶𝚑̶𝚢̶ ̶𝚒̶𝚜̶ ̶𝚝̶𝚑̶𝚒̶𝚜̶ ̶𝚜̶𝚝̶𝚞̶𝚙̶𝚒̶𝚍̶ ̶𝚌̶𝚊̶𝚛̶𝚍̶ ̶𝚒̶𝚗̶ ̶𝚜̶𝚝̶𝚊̶𝚗̶𝚍̶𝚊̶𝚛̶𝚍̶?̶

 The Ancestral Recall joke being that it's very easy to get three lessons in the graveyard to make Accumulate Wisdom pick up three cards, backed by eight cards that can make it only cost one blue mana in Gran-Gran and Artist's Talent. However, the deck itself is complex to pilot and requires a lot of good judgment calls.  There are still outlets, multiple mana sink game pieces in Agna Qel'a, Stormchaser's Talent, Artist's Talent, and three choices of Monument to Endurance exist. Not to mention also having to know what you'd want to be potentially drawing (or sending away) with the deck while looting many cards and also giving you lots of instant speed agency to consider for the opponent's turn, especially before you have generated the resources to close. In a deck that has a dozen variations on how a game can go with any given hand, the secret is deceptively simple: have a gameplan. Right or wrong, it is better go have a plan than to have none. And all of this is before conversing about how to sideboard in accordance with said plans.

 To elaborate, the three main ways a game can be won, primarily game 1, are:
1) Make Otter tokens, push with prowess and interaction early.
2) Artist's Talent and Monument to Endurance go brrrrrrrr until you're ready for life loss mode.
3) Chain off multiple Accumulate Wisdoms, sometimes back with a Stormchaser's Talent, and win by concession or long game on value with a full graveyard.

 To maximize the power of the deck, it's important to weigh your options and be mindful of your plan as early as your first few turns.

 All that said, I firmly believe this is a deck that rewards the skill of the pilot, akin in a way to the Death's Shadow decks of modern years ago, if you can navigate the quiet complexity. Playing what I forecasted to be a top 3 choice at minimum, I chose lessons because I knew I could outplay throughout the weekend, even in the mirror, and after testing I felt comfortable enough with the lines to know how each matchup is won and lost. In this tournament report, I'll share my experiences, how I sideboarded, cool interactions throughout the weekend, and other nuances to help any potential lesson gamers out there.

 My choices in the "flex" spots in the list are one mainboard Spell Snare, one mainboard Three Steps Ahead, and one Iroh's Demonstration. Some lists will try Ral, Crackling Wit, Sear, or an extra It'll Quench Ya!. I'm on three Stormchaser's Talent instead of four, as having the second copy of this card at a time is less exciting with diminishing returns (think bouncing it with a Boomerang Basics), unless we're in a drawn-out game. My crucially important last-minute changes to the list, courtesy of team captain Kazi Baker for the borrowed cards and feedback, included the 2nd Agna Qel'A over 6th Island, mainboard Spell Snare over the 4th Stormchaser's Talent, a sideboard The Unagi of Kyoshi Island over a 3rd Quantum Riddler, and a sideboard Broadside Barrage over Ral, Crackling Wit. It took a long time to accept going from four down to three sideboard alternate win-cons in losing Ral, but I wasn't impressed with it enough when I was more attracted to having another answer in Broadside Barrrage for potential planeswalkers or Spellementals.

 On a personal note, being born and raised in Wisconsin, this was my first time returning to my longtime home state since leaving five years ago to move to SoCal and eventually Utah. Seeing my mom, my brother Vinny, and Shawn Dorn, who taught me how to play Magic ten years ago, was refreshing for the soul. Not to mention having Amanda (#goatedgirlfriend) also giving moral support. This was likely the most relaxed I'd been going into a Regional Championship among any of the nine I'd played, despite the obvious chip on my shoulder to not scrub out with home-field advantage. Worst case, I get to go to a Bucks game with the teammates if day 1 goes poorly. Life isn't so bad any which way.

Onto the Regional Championship! We've got 1,193 players! Tournament path with full opposing decklists is linked here if you'd like to follow along there.

ROUND 1 - WIN 2-1 VS Four-Color Control (1-0)

 This was the Jeskai Revelation deck splashing black for two Fire Lord Azula and two Inevitable Defeat. Game 1 felt nice with my opponent needing to turn 3 Stock Up on the draw to find lands and losing a card to cleanup, and essentially going shields down to allow me to rummage through bad game 1 cards (red removal) with a resolved Artist's Talent and even drawing a few cards off a Monument to Endurnace for a while before he could find an answer. Combined with a few Otter tokens chipping in and a few Accumulate Wisdoms when the opponent would tap out, the tempo and accumulating value advantage let us get there relatively easily without our opponent seeing any Jeskai Revelation. This is the kind of matchup where Stormchaser's Talent and Monument to Endurance, in particular, shine for their versatility as both clocks and value enablers.

+2 Quantum Riddler
+2 Spell Snare
+1 The Unagi of Kyoshi Island
+1 Disdainful Stroke
-4 Firebending Lesson
-1 Iroh's Demonstration
-1 Combustion Technique

 Keeping the removal suite in mind, trimming a few Gran-Grans for Soul-Guide Lantern here (for the card draw) is acceptable. In hindsight, I would've considered trimming two.

 Two quick principles before continuing. Firstly, we obviously drop our red removal in these kinds of matchups, and lessen our lesson count. We'll cut lessons in a lot of matchups one way or another in the face of grave hate. If we're conceding power from Gran-Gran and Accumulate Wisdom in being on fewer lessons, we need to be okay with Wisdom just being Anticipate and getting us one card at instant speed or even discarding it for other things. Live with not always getting three cards, as powerful as the upside is. Secondly, like many decks I've reported on in the past, this deck can afford to play a bit of transformational sideboarding. We'll find yet another angle of attack in our Quantum Riddlers (which come in a LOT) and The Unagi of Kyoshi Island. Riddler is enabled with us emptying our hand early if we don't get our way with Monument, and Unagi gives us a very pesky instant speed threats if we're bringing in many counter spells. This is called foreshadowing! We're stretching the opponent thin post-board when they have to worry about the Talent-Monument plan, lesson count in the graveyard, sometimes just getting there with the Otter tokens, and now three stand-alone big blue haymakers. Makes you wonder how all of this versatile action fits into a 60-card deck.

Game 2 doesn't go as well. I'm slowly chipping through with an Otter and a Gran-Gran, but Quantum Riddler and Monument to Endurance aren't living for long with two timely copies of Inevitable Defeat and two Jeskai Revelations on curve shutting the door on any advantage I had. In hindsight, I should've conceded earlier, but I thought I had enough to fight through the first Jeskai Revelation. We go to game 3 with about twelve minutes left.

 Thankfully, a turn 1 Stormchaser's Talent, turn 2 Artist's Talent, and turn 3 Monument to Endurance all stick and give me enough value to push through with card advantage on the play, eventually electing to have the opponent lose three life each turn with Monument before he could play for a draw.

ROUND 2 - WIN 2-1 VS Boros Dragons (2-0)

 I still can't get on Melee and paper pairings aren't being posted anymore. Boo! I call over a judge in order to not get a game loss, and they walk with me to ensure no penalties or misunderstandings with my opponent. Next up is Jonny Stange from Chicago on Boros Dragons. Game 1 on the draw is somewhat uneventful in Jonny getting off to a decent start with a Sarkhan, Dragon Ascendant followed by decking me with a Nova Hellkite twice. I'm online with a Gran-Gran and Monument to Endurance, but only having one removal spell in a Combustion Technique doesn't afford me enough time (despite an Accumulate Wisdom drawing three) to try turning the corner when he's continuing to put out creatures, and my Otter token from a Stormchaser's Talent doesn't win that race.

-2 Monument to Endurance
-2 Boomerang Basics
-1 Stormchaser's Talent
-1 Firebending Lesson
+2 Quantum Riddler
+2 Flashfreeze
+1 Disdainful Stroke
+1 Broadside Barrage

 I had no sideboard notes for this matchup and only played against it for the first time the day before, so I'm on my own. With my opponent having an aggro initiative, this is a rare matchup where I'm okay trimming on Monuments. I considered bringing in Slagstorm, but didn't feel like there would be enough small targets post-board to justify it if I'm looking for just Sarkhan, Dragon Ascendant and Voice of Victory.

 Jonny mulligans to six and has a relatively slow start. This time, on the play we've got Artist's Talent and one of two remaining Monument to Endurance up with some red removal clearance and a Flashfreeze to help stave off any 4-5 mana threats while drawing cards. This setup is a buzzsaw for creature decks if they aren't fast enough, despite him having a decent Requisition Raid.

 Game 3, again on the draw, Jonny casts a creature each turn in Voice of Victory, Clarion Conquerer, Magmatic Hellkite, and a potentially scary Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest in a repeated suite of red removal and two Flashfreeze. Despite trading multiple cards and hitting my land drops, I'm at a measly 5 life, while Jonny's at 12, but I'm pushing with an Otter token, Gran-Gran, and a Monument to Endurance. With four lands and telling me he had two Burst Lightnings in hand, he made what I believe was a mistake and pointed the first one at an Otter token in fear of getting clocked too fast. I had thought he'd hope for a topdeck 5th land to try double Bursting me for 8 while behind on board. His 2nd Burst goes to Gran-Gran, and he later eventually tutors for a Nova Hellkite with Maelstrom of the Spirit Dragon. I have an immediate answer for it, and win the watch after using the Monument to take him down three life each turn.

 Post-match, we did some math, and double Burst Lightning was never going to be available with what hidden information later gave us, but now he was mindful of the line. Overall great match and analysis. I gave some feedback on his sideboarding in what's most likely to beat me, since he seemed like a nice guy and wanted to help him find success if possible. In a twist, we would end up checking up on each other in-between rounds and exchanged contacts by the end of the weekend. Jonny went on to go 4-0 against Lessons the rest of the way and finished in 16th at 11-3-1 to make Top 16 with me! Wholesome.

ROUND 3 - WIN 2-1 VS Green Landfall (3-0)

 This is a tough matchup, especially in game 1. Green Landfall has many haymakers in Icetill Explorer, Earthbender Ascension, Sapling Nursery, etc. that, by nature, bowl over our plans quickly. Izzet Lessons doesn't deal with big trampling creatures or go-wide approaches well if unchecked. Not to mention Badgermole Cub and Llanowar Elves can just close a game against a slower hand. To win, we need early stopgaps, and to hope they run out of gas long enough for us to properly develop. Sure enough, I have a timely It'll Quench Ya! for an early Earthbound Ascension, I Combustion Technique an Icetill Explorer, but Sapling Nursery sneaks in, and I'm just a bit too late in dealing with the multiple 3/4's clocking in before I can start being proactive.

-3 Stormchaser's Talent
-3 Boomerang Basics
-1 Iroh's Demonstration
-1 Abandon Attachments
+2 Annul
+2 Flashfreeze
+2 Quantum Riddler
+1 Disdainful Stroke
+1 Sear

 We can't get fancy; we have to mostly drop the Otter plan and just have all of the answers in the world before we can progress in this matchup. Game 2 goes very slowly, but I have a full grip of answers while eventually finding a Monument to Endurance paired with an Agna Qel'A and a very late Gran-Gran, only because I'd run out of action and drew a million lands. My opponent clocking in with a single Fecund Greenshell proved to not be enough after I would go on to finally draw a couple of Accumulate Wisdoms.

 More of the same in a somewhat quicker game 3, except chipping in with a Gran-Gran and a late Monument to Endurance. Flashfreeze has felt like an all-star so far.

ROUND 4 - WIN 2-1 VS Dimir Doomsday (4-0)

 Another tricky one. Dimir Doomsday gets to play Deceit and Doomsday Excruciator (both also copyable with Superior Spider-Man), the latter of which is an auto-loss for Izzet Lessons as the deck already can't close in one turn, especially with blue and black answers abundant. The winning line is to either lean on multiple Otter tokens crashing through if you can find them, or find a way to aggressively tick down the opponent's life total with Monument to Endurance, most times foregoing the card draw. Not hopeless with Lessons playing counter spells of their own, but this matchup needs to be played carefully.

 Thankfully, I have a Gran-Gran and two Otter tokens (Talent + Boomerang) getting through two or three damage at a time despite a removal spell, while having excellent interaction in hand without yet having Artist's Talent or Monument to Endurance online. The opponent slowly develops with a Stock Up, Winternight Stories, and a Deceit somewhere. I still have an It'll Quench Ya! for a timely Superior Spider-Man and eventually find the Monument to have the opponent start losing life without combat. With them at five life after trading a few cards, we have them just low enough to take game 1.

+2 Quantum Riddler
+2 Soul-Guide Lantern
+1 Disdainful Stroke
+1 The Unagi of Kyoshi Island
-4 Firebending Lesson
-1 Iroh's Demonstration
-1 Spell Snare

 Our deck gets much better post-board; however, Doomsday will also get Duress and a handful of big threats like their own Unagi and Wan Shi Tong, Librarian if they choose to back off of the Excruciator plan. On the draw, I'm hit with the turn 1 Duress, turn 2 Deceit, followed by a turn 4 Superior Spider-Man copying Deceit, later teaming up with Harvester of Misery. I can't develop fast enough to effectively deal with both threats and lose to the midrange approach.

 Game 3 gets to a very complex board state where I have a Quantum Riddler, Artist's Talent, and a Monument to Endurance, and appear to be winning with hefty damage represented, only briefly slowed down by a Superior Spider-Man copying Deceit. Then my opponent throws a very annoying clock at me in Riverchurn Monument. Threatening to now kill me by mill at instant speed with its exhaust ability and forcing me to keep track of how many cards are in my library and graveyard, with not much time left. I want to commit crimes every time someone plays this bunk card against me. My opponent is at 11 and can mill me out next turn, Riddler and two activations of Monument (one on my turn, one on his) puts him to 1. Not good enough.

 With plenty of mana and spells, looting many cards, and desperately looking for another Monument effect, I remembered a line compliments of Paul Green from Team Handshake in spots where you're married to killing with Monument. Late in the turn, I pick up a Three Steps Ahead, copying my Monument to Endurance! Now I win by casting a random non-creature spell anytime in response to my opponent milling me and making him lose six life while he's at 4! The opponent digs for something and forces me to have something on my upkeep as he activates Riverchurn Monument. I respond by casting Combustion Technique on one of my own Otters to win the match! Paul, if you're reading this, thank you, and very cool.

ROUND 5 - WIN 2-1 VS Mirror (5-0)

 I'm at Table 1 for the first time, and we've got a mirror match! I'm on the draw, but my opponent leads off with a turn 1 Stormchaser's Talent with mostly churning through cards for a bit. I'm fortunate in being able to get Artist's Talent and Monument to Endurance online first. My opponent finds a Monument of their own, but I hinder him with a Boomerang Basics to slow him down. I draw more cards off a Gran-Gran, find a nice Accumulate Wisdom drawing three, and then a second Monument, now making him lose six a turn. I'm too far ahead and he scoops for game 1.

 I have a difficult decision to make while sideboarding. An excellent beginner-friendly guide written by Reid Duke suggested trimming three of the four Gran-Grans (one to keep them honest) in light of counter spells and removal being plentiful, but the sideboard for those replacement slots is outdated. Kazi and local guy Gio prepped a sideboard guide for me that called for keeping them (editors note: check out the prisoner's dilemma). After considering how many cards I wanted to bring in, here's what I did:

+2 Quantum Riddler
+2 Soul-Guide Lantern
+2 Annul
+2 Spell Snare
+1 The Unagi of Kyoshi Island
-2 Combustion Technique
-2 Firebending Lesson
-1 Iroh's Demonstration
-1 Three Steps Ahead
-1 Abandon Attachments
-1 Stormchaser's Talent
-1 Boomerang Basics

 I decided to try four Gran-Grans up a game to test my opponent's honesty on removal for it and see what a proactive one mana creature could do for me on the draw with upping my curve for the two Riddlers and the one Unagi. Artist's Talent will be countered by all of Spell Snare, Annul, It'll Quench Ya!, and Spell Pierce, so having another card to make a potential Monument to Endurance go live would be nice. The cool thing about Izzet Lessons is that it hedges away punishment on my poor cards if I choose wrong with how much it loots. I'm trying this in place of a Stormchaser's Talent, Boomerang Basics, and Three Steps Ahead.

 The opponent is off to a slow start in game 2 with another Stormchaser's Talent, but has two Monuments. I'm proactive with Gran-Gran and a Monument as well, but hoping to take advantage of incremental value to win. This is stopped immediately with the opponent playing an Agna Qel'A as land for the turn and committing to forgoing everything else to activate it three times to make me lose 18 life. Nothing else going for him, and yet he wins in three spins. Unfortunately, I'm one life short of winning the race, and the third Agna Qel'A activation kills me. Props to my opponent for seeing the unintuitive winning line early while behind on board. Another example of understanding how you win after weighing your options.

 Game 3 is a simple one. I have lands, an Artist's Talent, and two Monument to Endurance with a Stormchaser's Talent. The hand feels great if Artist's Talent isn't countered. Everything resolves, but the opponent has the combo as well, with a few Otters trying to crash into me. Being on the play ends up being a nice advantage while drawing cards off Monument when I'm ready for the opponent to lose six life at a time, and I get there first to take the match after some complex mapping from the opponent. After some consideration, I lost seven lessons post-board, which was likely too much to justify working uphill for the upside of the full playset of Gran-Gran at the cost of the Talent + Boomerang synergy, even with it accelerating the Monument plan.

ROUND 6 - WIN 2-1 VS Spellementals (6-0)

 A generally favorable matchup with an abundance of answers for the deck's twelve creatures in game 1. I resolved an early Stormchaser's Talent and Artist's Talent, and was able to load up the graveyard with lessons quickly to get my Combustion Techniques and Accumulate Wisdoms ready quickly. Between my Techniques and kicked Firebending Lessons, my opponent's threats never stuck long as I had the way cleared to slowly set up for a Monument to Endurance drawing cards until I'm ready to start popping off, fueled by a level 2 Talent activation fetching another Accumulate Wisdom from the yard. Opponent scoops from falling too far behind.

+2 Soul-Guide Lantern
+2 Quantum Riddler
+1 Disdainful Stroke
+1 The Unagi of Kyoshi Island
+1 Broadside Barrage
-4 Firebending Lesson
-1 Iroh's Demonstration
-1 Boomerang Basics
-1 Stormchaser's Talent

 This boarding had an inaccuracy, taking out the mainboard Spell Snare over a Flashfreeze would've been optimal. Could also take out a Boomerang Basics for the 2nd Flashfreeze. I lose game 2 on the back of getting a Monument, but no Artist's Talent, and my opponent having counter spell backup to The Legend of Kuruk and Hydro-Man, Fluid Felon coming in together to where I can't deal with the quick clock.

 Third game was a grindy one as I slowly looted every turn with a turn 1 Gran-Gran while hitting land drops and answering Eddymurk Crab and Hearth Elemental one at a time until finding a resolved Monument to Endurance off a late Accumulate Wisdom. Soul-Guide Lantern proved to be effective here in slowing down my opponent on their graveyard count just long enough for me to hit my land drops in preparation for X/5 haymakers.

 Having almost no time for breaks in between rounds, before I know it, I'm locked for day 2 at 6-0! However, Kazi and teammates Adam and Dana Fischer sadly remind me that with this sixth match win, I've also lost my win-and-in for the Bucks game tomorrow. All good though, they got spanked by the Raptors that day anyway. 🙃 Dear God, please help my team...

ROUND 7 - WIN 2-0 VS Temur Rhythm (7-0)

 This is an interesting take on the Simic Rhythm deck, splashing red for Ashling, Rekindled mainboard, plus other fun options in the sideboard. Game 1 came down to me using the red removal to blow up several mana dorks, but they would get a decent amount of utility with Ashling to eventually hit an Ouroboroid that gave the team one +1/+1 counters before I removed it. I have an It'll Quench Ya! for a big Nature's Rhythm turn (likely looking for another Ouroboroid), but they follow up with a Quantum Riddler that smorcs me a few times. However, Accumulate Wisdom gets me plenty of cards, and I progress my own plan with a late Monument to Endurance to help close it out before Riddler can.

+2 Quantum Riddler
+2 Flashfreeze
+2 Spell Snare
+1 Disdainful Stroke
-3 Stormchaser's Talent
-3 Boomerang Basics
-1 Abandon Attachments

 In a feels-bad moment for the opponent, they mulligan to five on the play and have two of their Llanowar Elves and a 1/1 land from Badgermole Cub blown up by my Iroh's Demonstration pinging the team for one damage. They bounce back nicely with a warped Quantum Riddler alleviating their card disadvantage, alongside me being off to a very slow start with little proactive development. Eventually, once Artist's Talent starts stacking my graveyard for my Accumulate Wisdoms to go live, it was only a matter of time before I caught up with interaction after getting clocked by the same Riddler again.

 I get my first 2-0, finally having a chance to grab food and water. Despite not feeling great physically and being somewhat beside myself mentally for the hot start, it's important not to lose oneself at this stage at the risk of making avoidable mistakes or getting too caught up in the moment. There are still two matches in the day to fall to 7-2 and fall off pace for a Pro Tour berth, so I cared more about just continuing to play good Magic and put myself in the best position possible for day 2, rather than thinking about standings.

 Walking over towards my table for round 8, the tables next to me have been plucked away towards the feature match area three rounds in a row without me. This time, Alan Ke and I are called over by a judge, and we finally have a chance to play on camera. We're at Table D, meaning we're the least prioritized of the four matches for streaming, but I'm still super happy to be there.

ROUND 8 - WIN 2-0 VS Simic Rhythm (8-0)

 I'm on the play with several red removal spells and an Accumulate Wisdom. After blowing up a few of Alan's mana dorks, he finds an Ouroboroid to start pumping up what's left of the team to start chipping at me the old-fashioned way by turning creatures sideways rather than the usual Nature's Rhythm turn. I have a Combustion Technique for the Ouroboroid and eventually stabilize with Stormchaser's Talent and Monument to Endurance to ensure my long game while still at 8 life, encouraging a concession after quenching a Nature's Rhythm.

+2 Quantum Riddler
+2 Flashfreeze
+2 Spell Snare
+1 Disdainful Stroke
-3 Stormchaser's Talent
-3 Boomerang Basics
-1 Abandon Attachments

 Similar story in game 2 in blowing up plenty of small creatures and now having Flashfreeze and Spell Snare holding down the castle. This time, Gran-Gran is present early to pair with a Monument to Endurance drawing me a card each turn, as we're not in a hurry to close it out after cutting off Rhythm's mana. Alan has some potentially scary counterplay in a Sab-Sunen, Luxa Embodied, but we have too much going on for it to climb him back into it.

 Although the friends and family in my circle certainly mean well, it's getting harder to block out the noise now at 8-0. My teammate Adam is literally screaming in excitement now, which he normally does only in extreme circumstances. People are also starting to hit up my social media.

 But as Kobe Bryant famously said, "Job's not finished". Whether appropriate or not, I don't want to give myself any permission to celebrate anything until the day is over. My goal at minimum is the Pro Tour, and 9-0 would be an excellent start towards that goal.

 Four undefeated players left. My round 9 opponent is Christopher Kral at Table B in the feature match area. Still not getting to play on camera, but what's more important is that we play good Magic. Azorius Tempo punishes early mistakes if given the chance to shut down any counterplay with High Noon and Voice of Victory paired together.

ROUND 9 - WIN 2-0 VS Azorius Tempo (9-0)

 In all honesty, I don't remember much from game 1 aside from being on the play with a turn 1 Gran-Gran, pointing a Combustion Technique at a turn 2 Voice of Victory, and running away with a Monument to Endurance on drawing cards. We progressively chipped in without seeing an on-board answer from Chris outside of some counterspells and removing Gran-Gran late.

-4 Firebending Lesson
-3 Stormchaser's Talent
-2 Boomerang Basics
+2 Annul
+2 Spell Snare
+2 Quantum Riddler
+1 Broadside Barrage
+1 Sear
+1 The Unagi of Kyoshi Island

 Mainboard Spell Snare feels great here, and we get two more post-board. Annul is also welcomed here in prep for High Noon, Seam Rip, Enduring Innocence, and sideboard Rest in Peace. That said, we sadly have to play by Azorius Tempo's rules if they stick a Voice of Victory or a timely Aang, Swift Savior, so the one mana answers feel great with our newly upgraded red removal package.

 With me now on the draw, Chris starts quietly, implying he's drawing out the game with early counterspells, but along the way, fails to hit his third land drop twice. He No More Lies something, and after seeing the missed land drop, I tried to milk the time advantage with a warped Quantum Riddler to squeak an extra card into my hand and help hit my own land drops while he's waiting to get going. He starts hitting land drops, but now I'm hard casting Quantum Riddler and have The Unagi of Kyoshi Island following soon, so he needs lots of answers to stop me from crashing through while he's on the back foot. He finds a High Noon with some temporary stops in Aven Interrupter, Tishana's Tidebinder countering something, and Aang, Swift Savior, but I have too much action after hitting Interrupter with a Sear and Aang with an Iroh's Demonstration, eventually getting my Unagi back from exile. Chris is forced into chump blocking before long, and the poor luck shortly propels us to 9-0. Nick Miller from SCG pulls me off to the side for some brief chit-chat and a photo for social media.

 Now we can celebrate for the time being. Shawn and my teammates are already waiting outside of the feature match barricade and people are starting to blow up my phone. Adam insists that we grab dinner together for a group celebration, as both he and his daughter Dana also made day 2 at 6-3! Three Logic Knot players made the day 2 cut! On our way out though, by chance, I run into Jim Davis and Corey Baumeister just outside the convention room, fresh out of SCG's commentary booth. I've been a big fan of Corey for a long time, so I absolutely had to go up and say hi. Introduced myself to Corey, and imagine my inner fanboy when he came up and hugged me in congrats the 9-0 run.

 Then like something out of a WWE promo, the other remaining 9-0 in Sergey Krasheninnikov is there too, pointing me out from the crowd in anticipation for our future feature match tomorrow morning. In excitement and much to Jim and Corey's subtle amusement, I start laying down some friendly trash talk to let him know I'm a sicko mode hardcore gamer built for the moment.

 We then make our way to SafeHouse, a spy themed restaurant in Milwaukee with a party of seventeen people! Including young prodigy Zach Aymie who also went nuts that day at 8-1! Most players at the table are convinced my Sultai Reanimator matchup is bad for tomorrow, but they help me craft a sideboard plan regardless for whatever advantages I could find.

 Onto day 2! We know our opponent. We know the matchup.

ROUND 10 - WIN 2-1 VS Sultai Reanimator
(10-0)

 View the full match here.

 Hello, world. Allow me a proper introduction.

 Without getting into the more intricate details already shown on stream, game 1 is nearly unwinnable. The two It'll Quench Ya! and the one Three Steps Ahead are the only glue that holds any hope together (Spell Snare targets are mostly limited to removal and Dredger's Insight), and even then, you have to live in fear while holding the mana up to respect anything if you're lucky to be hitting your land drops. While Sultai Reanimator can also pivot into a midrange plan with Wistfulness and Deceit if the combo isn't immediately available. Developing into a timely Artist's Talent or Monument to Endurance safely may be harder in this matchup than any other in standard.

 Sure enough, I'm trying my best to hold it together, but Sergey leads with a nicely milled graveyard, paired with an annoying Stock Up turn. Three Combustion Techniques and an Iroh's Demonstration still aren't enough when he eventually casts Superior Spider-Man, copying Bringer of the Last Gift and bringing back the whole squad, permitted to go for it after getting a look at my hand with Deceit. Essentially, nothing I could do in this one.

-4 Firebending Lesson
-2 Boomerang Basics
-1 Abandon Attachments
-1 Iroh's Demonstration
+2 Soul-Guide Lantern
+2 Quantum Riddler
+2 Flashfreeze
+1 Disdainful Stroke
+1 The Unagi of Kyoshi Island

 Deviating a bit from the notes the dinner table suggested, I decided to try 2x Flashfreeze over an Attachments and Boomerang in hopes of hitting anything between Wistfulness, Dredger's Insight, and Formidable Speaker. Like with the Gran-Gran experiment, I'm afforded a bit of insurance to be wrong with the wealth of looting available. Sergey disagreed with the move in post-match discussions, but I felt less excited about Boomerang and Attachments in a vacuum, especially with Boomerang finding its best value only if an extra Otter off Boomerang on Talent can crash through, or I'm so far ahead that Boomerang can remove a blocker to close it out. Difficult to believe it with so much interaction for Sergey post-board.

 We have turn 1 Soul-Guide Lantern in game 2. You CANNOT wait to cast Lantern when the opponent has a million cards to remove it from your hand. If they need to evoke Wistfulness, fine. It takes time away from their own development and gives us another land drop to push our own ideas. We're both on a mostly empty board for a while, aside from a Gran-Gran for a while after a late Wistfulness on the Lantern. Stormchaser's Talent helps me refill on gas to eventually lead to double Quantum Riddler getting Sergey from 12 to 8, then 8 to 0 through a hardcast Wistfulness and Deceit in a beefy race.

 Not to brag, I'm very proud of my gameplay in game 3. I start with turn 1 and turn 2 Soul-Guide Lanterns, lightning rods to take tempo away from Sergey to deal with them and remove his proactive threats. This insurance lets me go for turn 3 Monument to Endurance, followed by Artist's Talent and Stormchaser's Talent to start churning through more draws with Sergey's shields mostly down. Sergey is forced into a midrange-ish approach with hardcast Wistfulness. He then follows up with Superior Spider-Man. And I see an insane line with The Unagi of Kyoshi Island in hand, knowing he'll make a 4/4 Gran-Gran from my yard if I pop the Lantern in response to deny an elemental reanimation. I pop the yard, and Sergey has a 4/4 Gran-Gran.

 Then this happens. Juking the guys on commentary thinking I gave Sergey permission with no answers.

 Six cards off two Accumulate Wisdoms fail to find me sufficient gas (a bunch of lands) to help close it, but it can't fail me three times in a row. A great ending with high praise from commentary.

 With a cool graphic after intermission, I'm the lone undefeated, and our next one is a win-and-in for a Pro Tour berth. This is what we're here for.

ROUND 11 - LOSS 1-2 VS Spellementals (10-1)

:(

 Heartbreaker. I didn't necessarily care about going 11-0, but more for having the Pro Tour invite safely in hand to freeroll the rest of the way for Top 8 and seeding considerations.

 Game 1 here was similar to game 1 in round 6. Opponent would cantrip for several turns, they'd cast a big elemental, I'd answer it with plenty of gas and time to be proactive, with help from Accumulate Wisdom being an unfair Magic card.

+2 Soul-Guide Lantern
+2 Quantum Riddler
+1 Disdainful Stroke
+1 The Unagi of Kyoshi Island
+1 Broadside Barrage
-4 Firebending Lesson
-1 Iroh's Demonstration
-1 Boomerang Basics
-1 Stormchaser's Talent

 In addition to the notes on Spell Snare earlier, games 2 and 3 had me thinking that taking out all four Firebending Lessons wasn't correct, as, despite needing five mana to kick it and deal with a big Spellemental, it still keeps the opponent honest in having another removal spell if they stick. I got max-punished for this by the opponent having one of their two copies of Hydro-Man, Fluid Felon out turn 2 in both games. Secretly, a great option against me, as it adds an extra mana source on my turn to keep their shields up, and proactively chips into my life total every turn if I can't answer it. Effectively solving both issues from game 1. Being punched repeatedly while also needing to answer the big spellementals with counterspell backup wasn't in the cards this time, despite trying my best to optimize my outs. With Hydro-Man dealing enough damage, you lose a turn or two in trying to deal with the big threats when your life total isn't comfortable at 20. Well played by Jason Reid though, who eventually made Top 8. We have another chance to bag up a Pro Tour berth in the next one.

ROUND 12 - LOSS 1-2 VS Green Landfall (10-2)

 My opponent is Neil Estrada on a pretty cool Landfall list with two Surrak, Elusive Hunters mainboard, among other spicy choices over the more popular Sapling Nursery. In a twist, I win game 1 with a nice grip of interaction backed by an Artist's Talent and Monument to Endurance online together early, electing to draw cards. Somewhere early along the way, Neil just ended up running out of gas with just mana dorks present, allowing me to chain spells mostly uninterrupted.

-3 Stormchaser's Talent
-3 Boomerang Basics
-1 Iroh's Demonstration
-1 Abandon Attachments
+2 Annul
+2 Flashfreeze
+2 Quantum Riddler
+1 Disdainful Stroke
+1 Sear

 Game 2 is even more uneventful and clunky. On the draw, I have a loose, but keepable hand assuming I hitt land drops, and fail to ever find a third land, even with looting through an Abandon Attachments. Neil is ready to accelerate with an Icetill Explorer and Ba Sing Se on the field, and I quickly fall too behind to justify continuing to play.

-2 Annul
+1 Stormchaser's Talent
+1 Abandon Attachments

 I back off on Annul, seeing Neil doesn't run Sapling Nursery. Despite being on the play, I'm on the backfoot with my opponent showing me multiple copies of Surrak and a Royal Treatment blowout on a mostly removal-heavy hand, in addition to needing to fight through a Soul-Guide Lantern. Before I could effectively turn the corner double-spelling, I'm overwhelmed on board from a resilient line of threats and shake Neil's hand in congrats to his first Pro Tour. (Well deserved in light of his recent Spotlight Series run afterwards, too.)

 My hp bar is declining further within my head and stomach, and now I'm getting concerned about what few opportunities I have left for that elusive 11th match win. Cursing myself, undecided if my play is flawed, or if I can point to ill-timed variance (which I try to avoid). I'm now pacing the event hall to try to dismiss any harrowing negative thoughts.

 The tournament is over for me. The ozone layer is #cancelled. The sea levels are rising. Bitcoin is going to zero. Life sucks, and I hate everything.

 Then, in something like out of a movie, a parent of one of the Magic players from dinner last night comes up to give me some words of encouragement. Then about five players from different RCs in the past come by in my pacing round without me saying anything, maybe seeing I was under duress. (One being Zane Toledo, check out his Twitch channel meat_mtg) Still not feeling great, but they'd given me a fresh round of resolve and a reminder that we're still 10-2. Round 13 goes up, and although I'm no longer in the feature match area, it's a mirror. We like those.

ROUND 13 - WIN 2-0 VS Mirror (11-2)

 Thanks for the pep talk, y'all.

 On the draw in an absolutely wild game 1, we both basically allowed each other to go full send in looting away cards, drawing a million cards off Accumulate Wisdom, and setting up our combos. I have two Otter tokens from Stormchaser's Talents, a level 2 Artist's Talent, and a Monument to Endurance. However, the opponent has the Talent and THREE Monuments, albeit with no creatures.

 Opponent still has mana, and stops me on my upkeep while I'm at 17. Chaining random spells, while I'm responding with an Abandon Attachments and Accumulate Wisdom in looking for an It'll Quench Ya! (for what, I can't remember), and we've both gone crazy in casting spells before I can even draw my card for the turn. They've activated all modes in all three Monuments to go up three cards and make me lose nine life to go to 8. I get a Monument trigger to put them to 17, but I'm dead next turn, and it looks hopeless.

 But...wait. The opponent tapped out in chaining out during my turn. And my two Otters have three prowess triggers already with an insane amount of cards in hand...

 So I continue casting things of my own, including two Firebending Lessons on my own gigantic Otters to get eight prowess triggers on each and get in for eighteen damage to steal game 1. Boomerang Basics on my Stormchaser's Talent for two of those triggers was a great enabler.

+2 Quantum Riddler
+2 Soul-Guide Lantern
+2 Annul
+2 Spell Snare
+1 The Unagi of Kyoshi Island
-2 Gran-Gran
-2 Firebending Lesson
-1 Iroh's Demonstration
-1 Three Steps Ahead
-1 Abandon Attachments
-1 Stormchaser's Talent
-1 Boomerang Basics

 My opponent has very little proactive action, but does have a Soul-Guide Lantern. A Stormchaser's Talent and two Monument to Endurance all resolve on my end, and my plan is simple. Make the opponent have a Boomerang Basics or something to crash through with since my Monuments already resolved, and activate Agna Qel'A three times to win. It's almost non-interactable. An Otter and an Agna Qel'A spin puts them to 11, and with only two turns to deal with it and no action, I get the handshake for the 2-0 dub.

 We always keep it real here on thelogicknot.com. Shawn was nearby and right after wishing my opponent good luck on his next win-and-in, I hugged it out with Shawn and started crying like crazy. There's not much that can prepare you for big firsts like this, and that's okay. What started out as simple clowning around at McDonald's with Shawn teaching me the basics in 2016 turned into this blessed moment ten years later not too far from where it all started. Hugged and cried some more with my teammates, then prepped for round 14 back at the feature match tables, a win-and-in for Top 8. Whatever happens though, this has been a special weekend.

ROUND 14 - LOSS 1-2 VS Spellementals (11-3)

 I'm on the draw and we both mulligan to five. Opponent is able to crash through for a bit with a Hearth Elemental and an Eddymurk Crab to hit me in increments of 5 three times to put me down to 5 before I finally answer both and reload the hand with two Accumulate Wisdoms on a full graveyard. He points a Burst Lightning at me to put me to 3, but doesn't find the 2nd one before I'm stabilized on card advantage and pushing with leveled up Stormchaser's Talent and Monument to Endurance.

+2 Soul-Guide Lantern
+2 Quantum Riddler
+1 Disdainful Stroke
+1 The Unagi of Kyoshi Island
+1 Broadside Barrage
-4 Firebending Lesson
-1 Iroh's Demonstration
-1 Boomerang Basics
-1 Stormchaser's Talent

 I don't remember many details from game 2 aside from getting hit with many Spell Snares and losing a grindy game where we were both low on resources. However, my opponent wins the attrition with a hand repleneshment like Winternight Stories and a late The Legend of Kuruk follow up. My Talents and Monuments were effectively answered, and I'm just out of gas, in the game and mentally. Accumulate Wisdom is turned into Anticipate in the face of a nagging Soul-Guide Lantern all game.

+1 Firebending Lesson
-1 Spell Snare

 Finally correcting the Spell Snare inaccuracy and trying a Firebending Lesson to respect more threats in Kuruk and Hydro Man. Game 3 is on stream, but you wouldn't be missing much. I mulligan to five on the play, and I simply die to a clunky start and seeing another The Legend of Kuruk and Hydro Man, Fluid Felon unanswered (ironically) while I'm trying to get going. I'm down on cards quick while trying to rummage for something with an Artist's Talent. All of that with John reloading with Winternight Stories and some counterspell backup seals my fate. John was a really good dude throughout the match, so couldn't be mad losing to him.

ROUND 15 - ID VS Green Landfall (11-3-1)

 Turns out it's very likely a clean cut to Top 8 with allegedly a 10% chance to miss the Pro Tour if we play and lose (and for sure be down at minimum $1,000), so there's no reason not to shake hands and call it a weekend.

CONCLUSION

 Magic legend Sam Black once told me, "It's very difficult to play a perfect game of Magic", and that you should be excited to dive into retrospect on what could've been done differently. Looking back, the gameplay felt great aside from a few inconsequential mistakes early in the weekend. Izzet Lessons has a lot of quiet butterfly effects in early choices with how many cards you see throughout any given game, so I felt like my decision making fell into a pretty high correctness rate to maximize my chances. Sideboarding could have been better. For one, in ditching Spell Snare against Spellementals earlier, and I still question if I should have kept the Annuls in for round 12 game 3 with Neil having three Soul-Guide Lanterns (it's definitely possible). Under the observable scope, I'm satisfied with how I piloted and can make peace with pointing to variance (for and against me) in some spots after properly digesting the weekend. Overall, excellent weekend and many exciting firsts. Kazi Baker, Adam Fischer, and Paul Green all deserve credit for their contributions to my practice on Lessons that Friday.

 In light of Green Landfall rising in popularity, Lessons will likely lose some points within the next few weeks as TMNT is eased into standard, but is still very likely to be a respected force when Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven rolls around, given how high the deck's ceiling is. I expect to run it back with Lessons in Las Vegas if the metagame by then allows it.

 Questions or comments? As always, hit me up on Discord @PrezKoumori. Be sure to say hi if you see me at MagicCon: Las Vegas in early May! I don't bite unless you try to tell me that modern is a real format.

 Good games, everyone.

 ~Prez Kuhnke

Disclaimer: this article was written the week prior to what Kazi considers an inevitable Vivi Cauldron banlist on 2025. It now serves as a retrospective on Vivi, its place in the meta, and how decks like it could potentially affect standard formats in the future.

-Also Kazi

 Hey! Your favorite kind of mediocre MTG grinder is back with his annual article to justify his website spend!

 Today will be another thinkpiece/rant on the state of the Standard metagame. I am considering turning this into a series covering Pioneer and Modern as well, so please let us know on social media if you think you want to see those!

 To jump into it, I believe there are two major components any given format needs to have a healthy metagame. The first component is play patterns/depth. This refers to the various matchups within the format's metagame and how they play in to each other. The gameplay in those matchups can be full of meaningful decisions and inflection points, which is the "depth," or the matchups can be more or less solved once players keep their opening hands. Basically, the more impact your in-game decisions can have overall, the better the play patterns are.

 The second component is diversity. Here, diversity doesn't refer to deck or color diversity, but rather the diversity of archetypes, at least in my view. I view most Magic formats as having four major archetypes: Control, Aggro, Midrange, and Combo, and there is often overlap, especially as formats have higher power levels or larger card pools. I'll likely explore this concept of fusing archetypes more if we get to a Modern version of this article, but for now, let's take it as it lies.

 I want to start from the end, which is to say, discussing the format boogeyman, the Vivi Cauldron deck. Vivi Cauldron is one of the most powerful standard decks we have ever seen, combining the abilities of Vivi Ornitier and Agatha's Soul Cauldron with a spread of other UR threats, interaction, and filtering. Before Spider-Man's release as the most recent Standard set, it dominated the meta with a meta share over 30%. Even after Spider-Man's release and significant warping of decks trying to gain an edge over Vivi, it is still the second most popular deck, at time of writing sitting at about 22% meta share on MTGGoldfish.com. Most high-level players who I talk to agree that Vivi is one of two things you should be doing in the format, the other being mono-red, and most other decks which are actively trying to beat it only go about even, regardless of how many concessions they make.

 But why? Well, this question leads into the "unhealthy" part of Vivi; namely that in a relatively low power format, the flexibility and "coverage" of the deck is extreme. Coverage, which I've picked up from my time playing fighting games, refers to a player's ability to counteract what their opponent is doing.  One of my friends Paul Green puts it like this; paraphrased "I like decks that make moves. The more moves you can make, the more room you have to express your skill in any given matchup." Vivi, in its general card selection, builds, tech cards, and flex slots, easily has the ability to "cover" almost any angle it is attacked from. It has the capacity to be an aggro deck, a midrange deck, a control deck, and a combo deck, and while that may just sound like a midrange deck, the Vivi deck differs itself from previous strong midrange decks by not only doing all of things extremely well, but also being able to do all of those things within a single game of Magic. Most of that flexibility is actually OUTSIDE of the combo that it can perform. To give you an example: Marauding Mako is clearly designed to be an aggressive card. It gets big fast and it hits hard when it attacks. It also plays reasonable defense in the midgame if you are being attacked by an aggro deck, or even races their creatures by playing above curve. When you draw it late, it cycles for a new card, or hits the board as a slow, but present threat when you are the control deck. Finally, it happens to be a solid extender for the Vivi combo, allowing for continued mana generation when you have a Vivi under your Cauldron. Looking at the list below, so many of the cards fill multiple roles in the same way:

 Basically, every card that is not Cauldron fulfills at least two of these four archetypal roles. And while that sounds bad - and to an extent IS bad in a standard format where maybe 1/4-1/2 of an average maindeck is filling multiple roles at most - it does lead to gameplay where you feel like your decision-making REALLY matters. I think the problem comes from too many of the modes on your cards in any matchup besides the mirror being too good, and therefore, that option-select is somewhat illusory. That, in turn, comes from the fact that choosing most of the given options will often be good enough because of how synergistic the extra effects the deck construction provides are. This is all ON TOP of the fact that the deck is very very capable of comboing out, and ultimately what makes the games against Vivi Cauldron feel so bad as a non-Vivi opponent, while the Vivi player is taking a lot of time to attempt to meticulously make the right decision even though any of them are likely strong enough to win despite technically being suboptimal. A microcosm of this situation is one you see in the endgame of a lot of Vivi matches: the Vivi player taking 5 minutes in order to go through their moves on a lethal turn only to realize that they don't have to make the BEST decision in order to make one of the many GOOD ENOUGH decisions to close out the game. The game is only about scoring 20 points, not scoring all of them. It ain't basketball.

 Everything said actually leads to a final thought (and a bit of a left turn) as we near the end of my rant. I don't think banning only Cauldron will be enough. I am convinced Cauldron will see a banning on Monday, but I also believe banning Cauldron alone will not be enough. I think, in a post-Cauldron Standard, we see the Counter-Cauldron deck rise up as a legitimate and strong contender. I use that name to describe an archetype we have seen pop up occasionally amongst top lists, the UR midrange/agressive/control deck playing no copies of Vivi or Cauldron, specifically designed to counter the traditional Vivi Cauldron deck seeing as it is pre-boarded for the matchup (the Vivi mirror often includes siding out 6+ pieces of combo in order to play a more fair game as the combo pieces are somewhat clunky). This deck is largely predicated on playing the powerful combined value/aggressive creatures in the Vivi deck and turning them up to eleven with Proft's Eidetic Memory making every nonland card in the deck extremely live in the later stages of the game. This deck is far from Vivi Cauldron levels of broken - it lacks combo outs - but it does feel somewhat similar to the Cori-Steel Cutter deck of the past meta where there is just too much tempo in its draws to reasonably expect to compete with, with the power of Proft's substituting for Cutter (obviously Proft's being much worse, but in context, still extremely powerful). I am far from staking a hard claim on this deck being broken, but I anticipate it being problematic, especially as we go into what could potentially be a full unbroken year of UR tempo dominating competitive Standard.

 So, my last thing: ban Proft's. Ban Cauldron more, obviously, but I think the deck needs another hit in order to reign it in, and also just to definitively shake up the metagame. As much as I love blue and red spells, touching cardboard, and the general tenets of tempo decks, I think that we need something else. As good as the gameplay has been to me and some others who share my opinions, it is so obviously clear that the majority of the Standard playerbase feels Standard has been stagnant and far far too centered around one archetype since the printing of Cori-Steel Cutter. Even I think that I would enjoy playing other decks, and have done so despite Vivi Cauldron being the obvious choice. Metagames this centralized are clearly unpalatable and greatly harm the format in the long term. And in order to make sure that we see the shakeup we need to revive the format, because it is on its last legs both due to being stale and also being significantly oversaturated due to the competitive schedule, we should ban additional cards to ensure we can see different archetypes.

 All that said, I have hope for the upcoming format. I think current Standard's gameplay is really good, and in addition to Vivi having good play patterns, I think plenty of different decks have a lot of potential depth and intricacy. I would like to see a more diverse format where the meta moves beyond either Vivi Cauldron and decks that have been warped to fight Vivi Cauldron. In addition to the upcoming B&R, I see a lot of very cool cards in the upcoming Avatar set. I think we can reasonably expect there to be some new decks built around some of those other cards. Ultimately, I look forward to the upcoming season, and hope that we get to see some of those bans come through to get things moving again. A lot of things in standard are working well, but there are a few really REALLY big issues keeping it from being at the level we saw for the year following Outlaws of Thunder Junction.

#MakeGrixisGreatAgain

(But also fuck Donald Trump type shi)

-Kazi Baker

 Hey, Magic spikes!

 Suppose you're spectating standard from the outside looking in. In that case, you've probably heard through social media or other Magic players in your area about how Izzet Vivi Cauldron has been terrorizing the format. To an extent, there's a lot of truth to that. Vivi decks giving 39% meta representation as of this writing (Cauldron & prowess combined) these past couple of weeks have had players looking for the checks and balances necessary to combat the explosive turns that an unchecked Agatha's Soul Cauldron offers. We, as a community, can speculate that an emergency ban is warranted. However, I'm less convinced of the idea, as we're just starting the first of two standard seasons with WOTC committing efforts to limiting standard bans to around once a year, and this new Vivi Cauldron deck has been more prone to a wider range of answers format-wide and still a little less consistent compared to the uniquely homogenizing madness we saw yester-format in Cori-Steel Cutter, among other banned red cards (as crazy as that may sound). On the assumption that Vivi Cauldron is here to stay, we'll need to accept that it's likely going to be the strongest deck in the format for some time and plan accordingly.

 In my opinion, Vivi Cauldron has the far-and-away highest ceiling in standard, but it also needs some setup to get there, and can retract to its floor rather than its high ceiling quickly without a timely developed Agatha's Soul Cauldron or Winternight Stories. Pivoting into straight-up beatdown combat with Fear of Missing Out and Proft's Eidetic Memory will always be on the table, but beatable. That said, Dimir Midrange and Mono Red continue to be great choices in having their core 60-card maindeck relatively unchanged to Vivimania. Azorius Control has also solidified a stronger place in the format with efficient counterspells and great top-end cards like Marang River Regent and Overlord of the Mistmoors to shred any prolonged advantages Dimir Midrange and Vivi Cauldron will attempt. My deck choice this season will similarly attack the top tables, with some differences from Azorius that play into my strengths and offer nice percentage points against mostly everything.

THE DECK

 With Azorius Control being the clear favorite in decks that prefer nose-to-the-grindstone Magic, Mono White currently has less than a percent representation according to MTGTop8. Like Azorius, we're afforded the luxury of playing four Seam Rip (excellent in light of Lay Down Arms rotating out) and four Get Lost to disrupt Vivi Cauldron and Dimir Midrange right off the bat. Elspeth, Storm Slayer and Overlord of the Mistmoors are excellent win-cons on their own that can congest the board immediately in a way that you don't need to fear tapping out for them. And when all else is in doubt and we need to equalize, we've got boardwipes in Day of Judgment and Ultima. So what makes Mono White the move for me this season if we don't get to play Consult the Star Charts, Stock Up, or counterspells?

 For starters, this deck compensates by offering a greater wealth of creature win-cons, complemented by the card draw engines we get instead of the ones named above. Enduring Innocence and Caretaker's Talent maximize the potential of the playset of Fountainport, Voice of Victory, and Carrot Cake. This deck shines greatest when you lead off with a turn 2 Voice of Victory, force the opponent to interact with it on their own turn, then cast Enduring Innocence or Caretaker's Talent on turn 3 to immediately start drawing cards if Voice sticks. This core setup of the deck is an absolute nightmare for our opponents in the control pseudo-mirror. Even if you draw into a hefty amount of lands, you'll almost always have something to do with all of the card draw and mana sinks this deck offers.

 Secondly, the ability to be proactive while geared to openly welcome a drawn-out endgame is attractive to me in a world where I can match Dimir and Vivi Cauldron's board state relatively quickly without deviating from what the deck already does. Planting down an early Voice of Victory or Carrot Cake to buy time for turns 4 and beyond will almost always be fine if you don't want to hold up mana for an early Get Lost or counterspell in Azorius (and Sultai, with other removal).

 Finally, Mono White offers a haven of simplicity in not splashing a second color. It feels nice to have fourteen Plains in the deck to quietly reduce worries into just hoping we don't get mana screwed and knowing we'll never be off a color. Not for nothing, the eleven lifegain cards in the mainboard make life less stressful early too. Although I'm aware that others have tried light splashes of red or black to this core, I'm not yet interested in them enough to sacrifice the high consistency of more unconditional untapped lands and mono-colored stops.

 After about 250 matches on Mono White and consistently hovering the top 100 area of Mythic rankings on Arena, I've concluded that Mono White has game against everything with careful play if not being outright favorable (yes, the favorable sometimes including Vivi Cauldron post-board), with only stinkers among the somewhat common decks in Temur Battlecrier and Green Landfall. To ensure that I'm best prepared to match the results in paper before the RCQ season, I made a few changes to the stock list I started with.

 One noticeable difference compared to Mono White lists of the recent past is that I'm playing one mainboard Exorcise, which used to be an Elspeth's Smite to respect Dimir and not nosedive into a turn 3 Kaito loss. I find myself siding Exorcise into nearly everything already and would like another answer to Agatha's Soul Cauldron or another unknown big threat in game 1. It's an extension of the playset of Get Lost that can hit artifacts. I also tried Ishgard, the Holy See, and didn't like it coming into play tapped. However, it led me to the one-of Secluded Starforge, functionally a fifth Fountainport. Being colorless isn't a detriment in a mono-colored deck, and coming in untapped feels like a free spot for another mana sink in exchange for what would've been a fifteenth Plains. If you're lucky enough to have two copies of Sunken Citadel, you'll only need to tap three lands for the 2/2 robot. Very doable. In the sideboard, I'm supposed to have two Pinnacle Starcage instead of one, but received only one of two in a shipping error when buying the deck. I'm trying Astelli Reclaimer as a value win against the control mirror to retrieve a Carrot Cake, Caretaker's Talent, or even an Elspeth, Storm Slayer back from the graveyard twice after we trade multiple removal spells. My other mirror-breaker in Ugin, Eye of the Storms has felt incredible for its guaranteed removal (its exiling is a cast trigger, right through counterspells) and demands a Get Lost (like Elspeth), otherwise it will rarely die in combat with so many loyalty counters and snowball quickly.

 In the weeks following this tournament, I've made some changes to the deck and some of my sideboarding philosophy after receiving some excellent feedback from players in paper events. Be sure to read to the end of this article for an updated list and sideboard guide.

PROLOGUE

 It's only week 2 of the RCQ season as I'm heading to Finch and Sparrow Games just east of Long Beach, the same store where I took my first invite on Azorius Oculus last standard season. Breakfast was sadly skipped this time, as the diner I had in mind nearby before the event was packed to the brim, but I had enough water with me and a decent amount of sleep from the night before. Going 7-1-3 in swiss through my first two RCQs on the deck so far, I'm playing fast and feeling confident. Additionally, I'm joined by Logic Knot teammates Kazi Baker, Adam Fischer, and Dana Fischer. This event is a two-slotter with five rounds. As usual, I'll be sharing my experiences and sideboarding philosophies throughout the day.

 Onto the tournament!

ROUND 1 - LOSS 0-2 VS Green Landfall (0-1)

 NOT the start I wanted. I get what I discover to be my most difficult matchup in the common field against my teammate Adam Fischer, fresh off winning the Gen Con Championship in Indianapolis. Not gonna lie. I got crushed.

 I'm on the draw and am met with a turn 1 Llanowar Elves, followed by Bristly Bill, Spine Sower, and Mossborn Hydra to quickly put me from 20 down to 2 without any Seam Rips or Get Losts. I'm also a step too late for Day of Judgment being on the draw. Unwinnable without stops.

+3 Exorcise
+3 Elspeth's Smite
-3 Carrot Cake
-2 Caretaker's Talent
-1 Beza, the Bounding Spring

 Our opponents will always have strictly suboptimal cards against us in game 1. Adjusting to the list I'm playing against, I trim a number of Caretaker's Talents postboard against mostly everything except the control mirrors. Talent doesn't immediately impact the board in the way that Enduring Innocence does, and we can trade its longevity for better cards depending on the matchups. Generally, the more aggressive stops I need, the less I care for Talent. The power of Carrot Cake will fluctuate with it. In this matchup, Adam has many tramplers, so Carrot Cake is good mostly just for an occasional card draw and scrying for other things. Green Landfall has a tricky strat in bringing in an Island from the sideboard to play Dragonback Assault and Repulsive Mutation. I know Adam plays this, making game 2 inherently harder.

 On the play, I land a Get Lost at a Bristly Bill, Spine Sower, and even develop with an Enduring Innocence and Caretaker's Talent. However, Adam sticks the Dragonback Assault, and even with an Exorcise, I find myself missing land drops and not finding anything to trigger Innocence or Talent. Adam counters a Day of Judgment, then casts another Assault teamed with a Mossborn Hydra. Too much for me to deal with on a poor follow-up.

 We play three more friendly games, sometimes with me voluntarily being on the draw to see what improvements I can make. It's still rough, and I lost all three. In conclusion, though, I decided that I needed to sideboard more aggressively into this matchup and get extra removal and continuity in congesting Landfall's board. Elspeth, Storm Slayer does both despite being five mana. Pinnacle Starcage also sweeps the two drops in Bristly Bill, Spine Sower and Tifa Lockhart. In future matches, I would add the third Elspeth in with Starcage, trimming two Voice of Victory. We're never really attacking much here.

 Round 1 has gone terribly, so you know what that means, chat. The tournament is essentially over. I'm selling my entire collection. The ozone layer is #cancelled. Bitcoin is going to zero. Life sucks, and I hate everything.

ROUND 2 - WIN 2-0 VS Mardu Control (1-1)

 Competitive Magic: The Gathering™ is a vicious cycle between "It's so over" and "We're so back".

 My opponent is on an interesting Orzhov Control list splashing red for Lightning Helix and Inevitable Defeat. In a mundane game 1, the opponent showed me an Elspeth, Storm Slayer that I quickly met with a Get Lost, but couldn't show me much else aside from creature lands. Even in the face of multiple Deadly Cover-Ups exiling my Overlord of the Mistmoors and Caretaker's Talent, Fountainport shines as an x-factor in the pseudo-mirror. My opponent eventually runs out of cards in the face of my multiple draws a turn, and I am able to win with a handful of rabbits and fish through the attrition.

+3 Exorcise
+1 Elspeth, Storm Slayer
+1 Astelli Reclaimer
+1 Ugin, Eye of the Storms
-4 Seam Rip
-2 Carrot Cake

 Both of us will take out our bad removal post-board. Ours is Seam Rip. Depending on what your opponent shows you, sometimes Beza, the Bounding Spring will be less exciting, but decided this time I'll back off on trying to maximize Carrot Cake on the assumption my opponent's exile removal will snipe my card draw engine in Caretaker's Talent and Enduring Innocence.

 This time, I'm able to jam a turn 2 Voice of Victory, turn 3 Enduring Innocence, turn 4 Overlord of the Mistmoors impended. Voice is met with a Lightning Helix. The 2/1 insects and Innocence are met with Deadly Cover-Up without exiling. I'm able to find a Fountainport early, and with Mistmoors promoting into a creature soon, the aggressive initiative has my opponent permanently on the back foot in trying to respond to everything. Even a Ketramose, the New Dawn (a mirror-breaker with proper setup) is met with an Exorcise. We proceed to still bowl over the opponent.

ROUND 3 - WIN 2-0 VS Vivi Cauldron (2-1)

 We've got the big bad in round 3. I'm on the play and have a great start in turn 2 Voice of Victory and turn 3 Caretaker's Talent. On the flip side, my opponent gets a turn 2 Proft's Eidetic Memory, but lags behind in missing the third land drop until eventually dropping a Tersa Lightshatter. Carrot Cake gives me two 3/3's after sending the Talent to level 3 to put the pressure on the opponent for the slow start. Not part of the gameplay for game 1, but we take those.

 Variance aside, the game plan is to prioritize the Seam Rips for Agatha's Soul Cauldron and Fear of Missing Out. FOMO is what enables the explosive combats, and Cauldron obviously unlocks absurd Vivi mana turns or making 4/4 dragons off of Draconautics Engineer. Don't fire Seam Rip at the first Marauding Mako or Proft's Eidetic Memory that you see early. Board wipes and Elspeth, Storm Slayer are great equalizers for this matchup when the deck can try to overwhelm us quickly with four copies of Winternight Stories. The deck is still absurd, so be ready for a prolonged game.

+3 Exorcise
+3 Rest in Peace
+1 Pinnacle Starcage
-4 Caretaker's Talent
-2 Carrot Cake
-1 Beza, the Bounding Spring

 Playing against Vivi more since this match, I've later concluded that although it's hard to safely get Caretaker's Talent online in this matchup, Voice of Victory is much less effective and gets caught under Pinnacle Starcage. Beza is one of many four-drops, but still plays decently when we're behind, so I would now keep it and some Talents and bank on the removal to give us the time to ease into our plan.

 However, the improvements that could have been made in sideboarding don't come to light this time, as I stick a turn 2 Rest in Peace to stop all Cauldron lines, delirium shenanigans, and flashbacked Winternight Stories. Now the opponent needs to get there the old-fashioned way with a Fear of Missing Out and Steamcore Scholar backed by Proft's Eidetic Memory triggers. Get Lost and Seam Rip are available for me early, followed by a Beza, the Bounding Spring to clog the board and gain some life. My opponent trades a lot of cards with me with Abrade and Fire Magic. They can draw Winternight Stories or Quantum Riddler to quickly claw back in, but I'm able to find my good topdeck first in a hardcasted Overlord of the Mistmoors to eventually get in.

ROUND 4 - ID VS Sultai Control (2-1-1)

 Yes, I took a round 4 intentional draw. I'm paired with Logic Knot teammate Kazi Baker. He's convinced that we're not going to finish the match and wants to draw. I was also about to approach him for the draw through teammate etiquette, basically meaning we both still have a win-and-in match for top 8 and we don't have to dreamcrush each other. Regardless, we quickly draw and go get food to prepare for round 5. Don't try this without doing tournament math first. You can still bubble out of top 8 at X-1-1 if there are too many players alive by then. After post-tournament analysis, Kazi believes Sultai Control struggles mightily against Mono White via Fountainport and Sultai having poor interaction in game 1. I'd still rather be a good teammate and help keep Kazi alive. I don't mind the draw bracket either. I go to Carl's Jr for a Double Famous Star to make up for not getting food before the event, much to my boy Kazi's flaberghasted shock and awe. 🙃 Me and the boys are going straight goblin mode for the win-and-in fast food.

ROUND 5 - WIN 2-0 VS Azorius Control (3-1-1)

 Being in the draw bracket gave me heightened chances to play my best matchups! Voice of Victory obviously shuts down countermagic on my turn and creates insane potential tempo loss for the opponent in needing to pay for spells at sorcery speed. Fountainport continues to be amazing in light of having so much build-around in this deck. Even when we don't have them, we'll never truly have "do nothing" turns. A sizable advantage in this matchup. One Enduring Innocence or Caretaker's Talent sticking will create a large, long-term liability for the opponent. An important consideration for this matchup is Get Lost. Assuming we both have four, we need to count how many each of us has used, as it's the best removal we're offered. We're still advantageous despite not having counterspells, as we have more must-answer targets in the eight draw enchantments, Elspeth, Storm Slayer, and Overlord of the Mistmoors. The opponent's must-answers are just Mistmoors and Elspeth. Get Lost is the only answer to Elspeth if we're behind on board, so it's kill on sight. That aside, among all control decks in standard, we are the fastest turtle in the race, and Azorius doesn't appreciate that proactivity very much.

 In game 1 on the play, I don't have a Fountainport for a while, but Voice of Victory does a great job holding down the city for a while as we trade Seam Rips back and forth to get it in and out of the field. After throwing a few answer-it-or-suffer haymakers while hitting land drops, we trade more cards until I stick an Enduring Innocence. I eventually find the Fountainport and a Secluded Starforge. Now we're gaming. His counterplay in Overlord of the Mistmoors doesn't last long as I continue to draw cards and present answers with my own board wipes camping in my hand for a while until my advantage snowballs with many fish and robot tokens after about twenty minutes of play.

+3 Exorcise
+1 Elspeth, Storm Slayer
+1 Astelli Reclaimer
+1 Ugin, Eye of the Storms
-4 Seam Rip
-2 Carrot Cake

 Game 2 doesn't take as long for us to finish. Fountainport is in my opening hand paired with two Caretaker's Talents. Voice of Victory doesn't come up, but I'm slowly able to add to my card advantage after one Talent sticks. After a few more trading turns, and I impend two Mistmoors, my opponent blows up my field and tries to turn my pace down by hardcasting Marang River Regent to bounce some of my board. In tapping out, though, I hit my seventh land drop and windmill slam Ugin, Eye of the Storms to immediately exile the 6/7 flier and gain more card advantage. With an Overlord coming alive soon and an Espeth, Storm Slayer also to follow, my opponent is overwhelmed by the continuity even after finding a Get Lost for Ugin.

 Kazi sadly draws his win-and-in against another Azorius Control player, knocking him out of Top 8 contention. Teammate Dana Fischer wins hers, and I'm feeling confident after seeing a lot of manageable matchups at the top tables throughout the day.

TOP 8

 I'm the 5th seed going into top 8 and Dana is on the opposite side of the bracket from me at 6th. We say no to splitting prizing. Onto playoff Magic!

QUARTERFINALS - WIN 2-1 VS Esper Pixie

 Another favorable one. The main payoff cards that Nurturing Pixie, Sunpearl Kirin, and Fear of Isolation maximize play very poorly into us in game 1. Trying to one-for-one a field of disposable tokens in a Fountainport deck with Momentum Breaker, Nowhere to Run, and Tragic Trajectory can't feel good. This deck still plays Kaito, Bane of Nightmares with a package of small creatures, so we need to respect that these suboptimal options can still protect the planeswalker if we're not careful.

 My opponent mulligans to six, and although I'm off to a bit of a weird start, mostly waiting to impend Overlord of the Mistmoors and buying time with two Carrot Cakes, the rabbits eat a Long Goodbye and Tragic Trajectory in a clunky start of their own. They try for a Cosmogrand Zenith, probably their best card in this matchup, but I quickly shoot a Get Lost at it. Pixie and Kirin get a Tinybones Joins Up taking my hand down a few cards, but a late Beza, the Bounding Spring and the now online Overlord of the Mistmoors have made it insurmountable quickly, and we take game 1.

+3 Elspeth's Smite
+1 Elspeth, Storm Slayer
+1 Pinnacle Starcage
+1 Exorcise
-3 Carrot Cake
-2 Voice of Victory
-1 Caretaker's Talent

 Keeping my mainboard Exorcise and adding another from the sideboard was a mistake. Despite being a deck full of enchantments, there are no good targets. Elspeth, Storm Slayer will quickly overwhelm their board and possibly remove a Cosmogrand Zenith.

 I mulligan to six and don't find my fourth land drop for a while. This time, my opponent is slowly chipping away with a Cecil, Dark Knight and Sunpearl Kirin bouncing a Stormchaser's Talent. Worse yet, they have Cryogen Relic to tap my creatures and counterspell backup in the sideboard with Annul and No More Lies as they press forward in hitting my life total. Enduring Innocence and Fountainport buy me time for a little bit to try and draw lands in casting Day of Judgment or Beza to stabilize Sadly, the counterspells pin me down just before I can stabilize as I draw the fourth land.

+2 Voice of Victory
-2 Exorcise

 Now that the necessary changes have been made post-board and I've seen that a counterspell package is on its way, we're ready for game 3.

 I go to six, while my opponent goes to five. Turn 3 Enduring Innocence is met with an Annul. Turn 4 impended Overlord of the Mistmoors is hit with No More Lies. I don't mind these trades when I'm up a card on the play and my topdecks are much better. My opponent has nothing proactive, so thankfully, Fountainport gives me a lifeline until I can present more threats to the opponent. After some mostly do-nothing turns for both of us (outside of Fountainport), Caretaker's Talent shows up. Good enough. I can clone some fish tokens and eventually send it to level 3 and buff my tokens, all the while drawing more cards. Turns out the opponent had only removal spells left before trying to jam a Stormchaser's Talent and Kaito, Bane of Nightmares. An impending Overlord of the Mistmoors resolves, and my opponent scoops it up for the match.

 Top 4 agrees to split prizing evenly. My opponent in the semifinals for one of the two invites is Ryan Slone from Team Collector Legion, the number one seed. Ryan wants to renegotiate prizing. We agree to have $40 and the invite go to the winner, with the rest of the money going to the loser so that they don't feel as bad. I haven't been to my home state of Wisconsin (#GoPackGo) since leaving, so I need to lock in for that RC Milwaukee invite.

SEMIFINALS - WIN 2-1 VS Dimir

 On the draw in game 1, I'm blessed with two Seam Rips to stop the first and second turn threats and not allow an early Kaito, Bane of Nightmares. Although I only have a Carrot Cake going for me early aside from this and my opponent gets to stick a Preacher of the Schism followed by an Enduring Curiosity, Elspeth, Storm Slayer successfully blockades the board. As I hardcast an Overlord of the Mistmoors, Dimir's top end isn't enough to keep up as I steal game 1.

+3 Elspeth's Smite
+1 Pinnacle Starcage
-4 Caretaker's Talent

 Like Seam Rip, Elspeth's Smite is crucial in this matchup, especially on the draw. Preventing a potential turn 3 Kaito hitting the field heavily prevents games from being dead lost.

 Game 2 does not go as smoothly. Ryan still sticks the turn 3 Kaito, and although I have a decent curveout myself, it does not include a Get Lost. An impending Overlord is denied on the 2/1 insect triggers with a Tishana's Tidebinder (great card for Dimir), and a Disdainful Stroke on my attempt to blow up the board after he begins presenting more threats with Faebloom Trick and Enduring Curiosity. Too much to overcome with counterspell backup.

+1 Elspeth, Storm Slayer
-1 Ultima

 In a last-second audible, I decided that I was more likely to get ahead on board and need Elspeth to help congest and close it out than the odds of falling behind and needing an Ultima being on the play.

 Game 3 is pretty crazy. Details are fuzzy on how we got here, but with me on the play, we get into a situation where we both have a well-developed board where I have some 2/1 insects, an Elspeth, and some rabbits. Ryan has a few Spyglass Sirens, Deep-Cavern Bat, Kaito, Preacher of the Schism, and a Cecil, Dark Knight. It's tight, and I should feel like I'm winning, but I'm only getting lands. Ryan can't safely advance either and has to -0 on Kaito to surveil away poor cards without being able to draw. He's representing Tishana's Tidebinder very hard for a bit, so I go to combat first before activating Elspeth to let him dress down my Mistmoors' abilities and keep going with Elspeth. I sacrifice a Carrot Cake to scry with nothing left in hand, and it's another Elspeth. I took a long time to think about how he could potentially remove my active Elspeth, and decided I could find a better draw and send it to the bottom. Very difficult decision.

 Ryan kills Overlord with Shoot the Sheriff, and I eventually find a great complex line with Pinnacle Starcage exiling all of the small creatures (including a Voice of Victory I drew), then using the -3 ability on Elspeth to blow up Tidebinder to let the board go empty. He then casts his one-of Bitter Triumph to remove Elspeth. I draw more lands, albeit mana to eventually activate Pinnacle Starcage for eight, and my stomach sinks thinking about that other Elspeth I sent to the bottom. I hate to think that my topdecks aren't going to show up, as if I just blew the invite.

 I draw a Voice of Victory again, but decide to activate Pinnacle Starcage first to get the two 2/2 Robots. Possibly from an act of God, I draw the third Elspeth that I added in for game 3 and cast it alongside Voice of Victory. Voice gets blown up. I draw another Overlord of the Mistmoors, abruptly stifled with another Tishana's Tidebinder. He makes one last effort with a Faebloom Trick to get something going, but I'm too far ahead. We win the invite in a mentally taxing war. This one tested my decision-making in a way that makes me glad the tournament is over. With Ryan being another strong grinder in the area, our games are always bangers.

FINALS - WIN 2-0 VS Vivi Cauldron

 Similar story as the last time we were here. My opponent wanted to go home. We do a slight renegotiation to where I get the cool looking lanyard. Free elo and less pressure the rest of the way with one invite in hand already in the pursuit of RC Portland.

CONCLUSION

 I only play one deck per season, unless I'm borrowing another one from a teammate, so I will commit to Mono White for the rest of the season. That said, the great results against decks not named Vivi Cauldron are obviously dwarfed by its relationship with the best deck in the format. With Vivi Cauldron making some recent improvements to the deck to better suit the mirror match, I think my matchup with it accidentally became harder, with Into the Flood Maw surprisingly being strong in pushing me further behind on board and releasing Pinnacle Starcage for an explosive turn. Quantum Riddler is no longer a secret either. Another card I don't want to see. Rest in Peace, Ultima, and Pinnacle Starcage are about as good as it gets against Vivi Cauldron, but it's still a tough one with the decision tree being what it is when having to forecast around the opponent drawing six cards a turn, or even now surprise combats with Wild Ride. If not Mono White, I'd like to try Dimir or Mono Red to still hang with it.

 I've made some adjustments to my list in following RCQs to get better stops against Vivi Cauldron and play more interaction to help deal with playing from behind against anything I see in game 1.

 No changes to the sideboard for now. I may play a 4th Rest in Peace over the 3rd Exorcise if I can get my hands on one. Mainboard, I've replaced one Caretaker's Talent, one Exorcise, and one Beza, the Bounding Spring with two Split Ups and one Pinnacle Starcage. Two boardwipe effects felt like too few these past tournaments, so we're getting more hard stops with five in the mainboard.

 Caretaker's Talent can safely be trimmed by one copy, as we still have seven draw enchantments once we've reset the board. We lose points against Azorius Control, but I'm at peace with it as we're still favored. Shown below is how I would sideboard with this new list.

PERSONAL STATS FOR NERDS

 Give me a shout on Discord at PrezKoumori if you have any questions on the deck or a specific matchup. Special thanks to my Logic Knot teammates for the continued support and giving me a platform to share my resources. Be sure to say hi if you see me in Milwaukee! (Or possibly Portland)

 Good games, everyone.

~ Prez Kuhnke

      Picture this: your Scapeshift is on the stack with four lands and one Amulet of Vigor on the field. You know your opponent has no interaction, and, accordingly, they tell you it resolves. “I win,” you smugly inform them.
      Their eyebrows furrow. “Huh?”
      With an audible sigh, you roll your eyes and move the four lands to the graveyard. You grab your deck and search out two copies of Lotus Field, one Simic Growth Chamber, and one Tolaria West - Japanese nonfoils, of course - and silently gesture towards the lands on the field.
      “So you’re going to be able to transmute Tolaria West?” Your opponent manages to cobble together.
      A broken clock is right sometimes, you think to yourself as a smirk forms. Heh. Broken clock, like the Ragavan that couldn’t kill you. “Float 9 pick up T West sac everything, transmute for Pact Analyst and crack.” You stare at your opponent.
      “Uh, sure, that’s fine.”
      “Bounce Twest get Pact get Titan get Woodland and loop you. I win.”
      “Sorry, can you slow down? How do you win?”
      You exhale an even deeper sigh. “I make infinite mana and then make infinite Titans and then Haste all of them, and I’m also going to hit all of your permanents with Boseiju and Otawara too, then swing for a billion.”
      Your opponent’s eyebrows haven’t unfurrowed since you started gesticulating at the table five minutes ago. They extend the hand. “I guess I can’t do anything about that. Good games.”
      “I guess,” you mutter as you limply reciprocate with your hand.
      Soon after putting the results into the Magic Companion app, you look at your standings: 2-2, with the worst tiebreakers. 9th place. No FNM promo pack, no store credit. “Bullshit”, you think as you storm out of the LGS. “I got so unlucky. I had the correct Explore/Rumble split. I had the optimal 61.”

Why should I care?

Silly vignette aside, FAR too many Amulet Titan pilots, both old and new, are guilty of poorly communicating their Aftermath Analyst combo kill. Although many competitive players will scoop at the point that you have the board state set up, no opponent is obligated to concede. Therefore (and this should go without saying), you should never be rude/antagonistic if your opponent asks you to play it out. At best, they might have some interaction, or, at worst, they want to skill check you. No matter what, you should be ready to clearly communicate your game actions. This will save you clock time and confusion.

Note: This is written with the expectation that you are already familiar with the Aftermath Analyst combo with Shifting Woodland. This is not intended to be a beginner-friendly explanation of the combo itself, but this document will touch on many of those details. If you are unfamiliar with the combo and/or getting to the Analyst looping game state (e.g. via Scapeshift lines or Titan + 2 Amulet lines), refer to the “Aftermath Analyst” and “Scapeshift” sections in Dom Harvey’s encyclopedia, hyperlinked.

Explaining the Aftermath Analyst combo

Explaining and performing the game actions that you will execute to win the game by Analyst looping can be broken into one prerequisite and three high level steps:

0) Set up your board to Analyst loop
1) Perform one iteration of the loop
2) Generate infinite mana
3) Infinite land activations

While this guide is more detailed and comprehensive, it is approximated to this verbal explanation in-person:
“I will use 8 mana to have Woodland copy Analyst then crack Woodland-Analyst for two Lotus, Forest, Saga, and the Woodland itself. These lands make 9 Mana. If you have no responses, I'm going to repeat this for infinite Mana of each color and colorless.
Then, I'm going to add in sacrificing Mirrorpool to copy Titan for each loop. Then, Titan will grab a Hanweir. I’ll haste a Titan, then sacrifice Hanweir instead of Forest for each loop, letting me haste all of the Titans. Swing for lethal?”

Step 0. Set up the board

This step may sound trivial, but it is important to be clear the distinction between the game actions taken to set up the board, and the actual loops; both involve similar steps. Activating Analyst, transmuting Tolaria West, activating Urza’s Cave, etc. can be used to set up the board to loop with Shifting Woodland, as well as later be used to convert a “loop” into a kill.

In short, your board should have Shifting Woodland and an Amulet effect(s) on the battlefield, Lotus Field(s) and Aftermath Analyst in the graveyard, 8 mana floating, and Delirium achieved.
If you have not met these minimum requirements, you likely do not have a deterministic loop that can be shortcut by Magic rules (and you are probably still setting up the board to get to this point).

Step 1. Perform one loop

1) Verbally note how much mana you have floating.
2) Activate Shifting Woodland, targeting Aftermath Analyst.
3) Sacrifice your Analyst copy to return Lotus Fields, Shifting Woodland and any other lands.
4) Float your mana, then sacrifice your lands to Lotus Field triggers.
5) Once again, verbally note how much mana you have floating.

Step 2. Loop infinite mana

1) Based on Step 1, inform your opponent you intend to repeat this loop a large number of times.
2) Each loop will generate infinite of a given colored mana by Lotus Field.
3) Each loop will generate infinite colorless mana by sacrificing a colorless-producing land.

Step 3. Loop infinite land activations

1) Inform your opponent that with infinite mana, you will now begin to loop with specific land activations/abilities from the lands sacrificed alongside Lotus Field.
2) For infinite ETBs, copy a land from your or an opponent’s graveyard with Echoing Deeps before sacrificing it to Lotus Field for each loop. Surveil Land nets “Mill 1” for each loop iteration, allowing you to get to any of the game states below.
3) For infinite creatures, activate Mirrorpool to copy a creature with each iteration of the loop.
4) For infinite activated abilities, activate the land before sacrificing it to the Lotus Field for each loop. E.g. haste with Hanweir Battlements, Urza's Cave to fetch any land, Ghost Quarter opponent’s lands, etc.
5) For infinite Tolaria West/Boseiju/Otawara activations: sacrifice Bounceland to Lotus Field, then bounce and activate Tolaria West for each loop.

What is a “loop”?

The definition from the Magic Tournament Rules (MTR), section 4.4, defines a loop as “a form of tournament shortcut that involves detailing a sequence of actions to be repeated and then performing a number of iterations of that sequence”. (We often say “infinite” but technically choose a finite number to arrive at a known game state. For cool number theory facts, please consult someone else and tell me what you learn.)

In the detailed explanation above, Step 2 is all about explicitly informing your opponent that you are going to use this shortcut. They can stop you at any point before the entire iteration of a loop is completed, such as casting Surgical Extraction after you activate Shifting Woodland targeting Analyst. But, critically, if your opponent doesn't have any responses, they cannot ask you to do the repetition one by one. Call a judge in this scenario. Likewise, YOU cannot choose to do these repetitions one by one. Per the MTR, “A player may not ‘opt-out’ of shortcutting a loop, nor may they make irrelevant changes between iterations in an attempt to make it appear as though there is no loop.”

However, many Titan players confuse this rule about loops with trying to go from Step 0 all the way to the final results of Step 3. You are allowed to let your opponent know what you plan to do across several steps, but this is not a rules-defined shortcut despite, yes, including loops in the middle of those steps. If your opponent asks you to play it out, do the individual loops; i.e. loop to make all the mana, then loop to make all the titans, then loop to haste all the titans, etc. You should do so with clarity out of respect for your opponent, and, in doing so, you also have the MTR (with judge’s help) if you face any bad actors who try to stall.

In closing

Don’t be an asshole. Know how to, and be willing to, play out your deck, and do it clean. If you can't clearly explain it, practice until you can - for your sake and your opponent's. You will save yourself, your opponent, and all of the other tournament attendees clock time. Good luck, gamer.
(Was this just a means to publicize the worst display of humility in all of Magic history in the prologue? I’ll never admit it.)

Wizards of the Coast announced that beginning June 6, with the Final Fantasy prerelease, there will be a tweak to the rules of how Sagas will work. The TL;DR is that:

1. Urza’s Saga will not be sacrificed as a result of Blood Moon type effects.
2. No more lore counters will be added under Blood Moon.
3. Urza’s Saga will retain any of the abilities gained from its chapter abilities under Blood Moon, such as the ability to make constructs.

(1) and (2) of the above applies to other Sagas that have their abilities removed, such as an Enchantment Creature - Saga under Dress Down. (Abilities will still be removed for more detailed reasons mentioned at the end of the article.)

If that’s all you care about, thanks for stopping by! You can express your joy or frustration in the comments below or emailing us at teamlogicknot[at]gmail[dot]com. The group is currently split on celebration vs desperation, with a curious correlation between whether or not they play Amulet Titan....

But why? HOW?

The “why” is very simple: with the release of Enchantment Creatures with the Saga subtype, new with the Final Fantasy set, WotC did not want them to be easily and unintuitively killed via effects such as Unable to Scream that remove their chapter abilities. To get into the “how”, or the more detailed mechanics of the current rules and the new upcoming rules, we have to get, what the L2s call, rules sweaty.

How do Sagas actually work?

As a reminder, “Saga” is a subtype of Enchantment, and Sagas have a few characteristics:

• A Saga enters with a lore counter on it.
• As a result of a lore counter being placed on a Saga, it will trigger one of the Saga’s chapter abilities.
• At the beginning of Main Phase 1, another lore counter is added to the Saga.
• When a Saga has all of its lore counters* and none of its chapter abilities are on the stack, the Saga is sacrificed as a state-based effect.

Let’s take a look at how this works with Urza’s Saga, step-by-step.

1. On Turn 1, Urza’s Saga is played. As it enters play, it enters with a lore counter.
   -The lore counter being added triggers the first chapter ability, and it gains the ability “Tap: add {C}”
2. On Turn 2, at the beginning of Main Phase 1, a second lore counter is placed.
   -This triggers the second chapter ability, and it gains the construct-making ability.
3. On Turn 3, at the beginning of Main Phase 1, a third lore counter is placed.
   -This triggers the third chapter ability, and the player can search for an artifact; perhaps an innocent, nonthreatening Amulet of Vigor.
   -After the third chapter ability has resolved, since Urza’s Saga has three lore counters, it is sacrificed.

How does Blood Moon work with Urza’s Saga now/before?

*Let’s focus on a small detail where I left an asterisk. The bolded part of “When a Saga has all of its lore counters … sacrifice it” is paraphrasing the more technical definition “at least N lore counters, where N is the number of chapter abilities the Saga has”. In normal cases, as described above, a Saga gets a lore counter that triggers its final chapter ability, then it's sacrificed. This is because it has a number of lore counters equal to the number of chapter abilities. Simple, right?

Blood Moon causes what is called a type-changing effect. We’ll get into the nitty gritty details later, but the result of this type-changing effect is that Urza’s Saga loses all of its chapter abilities. Since the number of chapter abilities is 0, Urza’s Saga will always have more lore counters than chapter abilities and therefore be sacrificed.

Okay, so what’s exactly changing?

WotC is changing the rules slightly. When a Saga loses its chapter abilities, it will not be sacrificed as a result of having “too many” lore counters. Urza’s Saga will stay on the battlefield as an Enchantment Land - Mountain Saga with however many lore counters it had when Blood Moon landed.

Another curious result, mentioned in the TL;DR, is that Urza’s Saga will keep any abilities gained from its chapter abilities. Most competitive players are vaguely aware that something called “layers” keep the game working, but have no idea how they work, kinda like magnets. To understand the Blood Moon and Urza’s Saga interaction, though, we must learn about dipole moments layers 4 and 6.

Blood Moon, as a “type-changing effect”, is applied in layer 4. As the name suggests, they causes objects to change their type and/or subtype. In this case, Blood Moon causes nonbasic lands to become subtype Mountain. In becoming subtype Mountain, nonbasic lands lose their abilities; this is why a Shifting Woodland loses both its “Tap: add {G}” ability and its “2GG: become a copy…” ability and also why Urza’s Saga will lose its chapter abilities. Inherent to subtype Mountain, they gain “Tap: add {R}”. However, abilities gained (as a result of previously triggered chapter abilities) are applied in layer 6, which comes after layer 4. Therefore, it retains these ability-added effects.

I’ll briefly mention that Alpine Moon works differently than Blood Moon with Urza's Saga and will remove the abilities gained because it has the text “lands … lose all land subtypes and abilities”. The “lose all land types” applies to layer 4, which is not the relevant part. The “lose all abilities” applies to layer 6; assuming the Alpine Moon came in after the Urza’s Saga was in play, it will override the abilities gained that also apply in layer 6.

The ramifications of these changes are hard to tell beyond the basic observation that Urza’s Saga becomes stronger and Blood Moon effects become weaker against opposing Urza’s Sagas. Amulet Titan in general greatly benefits from no longer losing a land, though the effect is still devastating against the deck as a whole. The change is particularly relevant in the Amulet Titan vs UB Murktide matchup that is currently strongly in UB Murktide’s favor. Harbinger of the Seas becomes much less of a hammer because it enables the Urza’s Saga construct gameplan that their deck already struggles to deal with.

Some players are toying with the idea of combining Urza’s Saga with Blood Moon effects in their own deck to enable the construct gameplan I’ve mentioned a few times. I’m dubious this will stick around, as Urza’s Saga constructs have not been a reliable way to win for quite some time in Modern, especially with the speed the format currently operates in. A second-order effect Amulet Titan degenerates fear is that this will enable other Urza’s Saga decks to play moon effects, such as Harbinger of the Seas in Affinity-style decks. Realistically, they are just fearful when the truth is that the deck has and will always remained tier 0 or 1 through metas with KCI, Hogaak, Eldrazi, Oko, Mox Opal, Treasure Cruise/Dig Through Time, Faithless looting/Golgari Grave Troll Dredge, and Urza’s Saga rules changes. The deck is always the most broken thing in Modern and just avoids bans by being hard to play.

Rules citations:
CR 613 - Interaction of Continuous Effects (613.1 describes the order of layers)
CR 714 - Saga Cards

Thanks to incredible judges Garrison (@hanweirgarrison) and John (@zakana) who have the patience to help laypeople, like myself, understand the changes!

Hello everybody!

Today we're gonna put on our evaluation hats and look at one of the most played cards in standard today: Sheltered by Ghosts.

History Lesson: O-Ring

This card looks straightforward on the surface: it's this formats playable version of Oblivion Ring, seen previously in cards like Ossification, Silkwrap, and Banishing Light at its most basic. That being said, there are a lot of knobs and dials on this card, which we will break down piece by piece before getting into further evaluations to understand what makes this card so unique.

This card is two mana. Historically, the line of playability for this kind of effect is usually the efficiency or the modality of the effect, the clear line in standard being the effect is good for less than three mana, but if it costs 3 (or more) it has to have other lines of text. Obviously, things evolve over time, and standard MTG has been no stranger to powercreep, but this still seems to be more or less the case. Cards like Ossification, Leyline Binding, and Seal Away have been staples in standard formats due to how cheap they are. On the other hand, and less recently, cards like Ixalan's Binding, Cast Out, and Quarantine Field have cost more mana, but offered more flexibility in their usage, and have seen play, although they were more constricted to control decks.

But What Does it Actually Do?

The first line of rules text, "Enchant creature you control" are probably the first and most critical difference between this and most of the effects similar which have existed in the past. Whereas most of these enchantments have existed standalone, or attached to permanents significantly more difficult to interact with such as lands (see: Chained to the Rocks, Buried in the Garden), this card must target a card which is often contested on the battlefield face-up, and also requires a certain amount of creatures in deckbuilding. There actually is an analogue to this particular set of effects, which we will discuss later (but you get a cookie if you guess which card we are referring to in the comments. Hint: it was reprinted very recently but is not standard legal). This is, by and large, a weakness outright, due to the vulnerability of creatures at large, however, there is further reading to be done.

The next line of text is the most straightforward, the famous Banishing Light text. It is worth noting it does have the new-world text which prevents itself from being removed from the battlefield in response to its own trigger, and permanently exiling the targeted permanent. In contemporary magic, since about 2014, this is basically standard practice, however there have been exceptions to this rule such as Skyclave Apparition, although even with that card it didn't come up very often. This type of play is unavailable with this card, and it will also not blink a card if it is removed in response to its trigger as well. Examining the ability for its intended use, exiling a creature is very strong. The game is largely board centric in today's standard, and getting ahead on tempo is important. "Exile" is also important, seeing as there are many death triggers in the format which are relevant, and even some creatures and spells which grant indestructibility, which this can potentially get around. It is also a required trigger, meaning if your opponent has any creatures, it must target one of them unless otherwise illegal, and it is onesided, meaning it cannot target your own permanents.

"Enchanted Creature gets +1/+0 and has lifelink and Ward (2)" is a bit of a twist. It is the part of the card intended to make up for the creature being somewhat vulnerable, attempting to cover one of the weaknesses by making the enchanted creature significantly more difficult to remove, making up for the slight loss of tempo in the lack of board development with an extra point of power, and lifelink is excellent as a hedge against aggressive decks.

Evaluation

Deckbuilding Requirements

Before moving onto play patterns, let's quickly address what the card asks of you, the player. In deckbuilding, this card requires a critical mass of creatures. If you draw it without the ability to enchant a creature, the card is outright dead, and therefore doesn't really fit the slot of a "value" card, skewing it more towards aggression and tempo plays. This card (unlike an Ossification) cannot go into just any pile of 60 cards regardless of archetype, and the incentives would further push you to where it requires you to go, that tempo shell I was referring to.

This is further exacerbated by the card giving ward, rather than hexproof, meaning it does get significantly worse as games continue and players have the mana to pay to remove the enchanted creature, or wipe the board outright, granting what will often be the dreaded 2-for-1 special. Therefore, the card asks the deck it is played in to close games somewhat quickly, meaning it likely cannot center around a single tempo-oriented creature, as it would not push damage fast enough only giving +1/+0 to fully enable a bogles-style deck, unless edict effects are completely nonviable which is not the case in a standard format with both Liliana of the Veil and Sheoldred's Edict. All this to say this belongs in a deck which plays a lot of creatures but wants to push damage rather than play a controlling/longer game.  In other words, this card belongs in agressive/tempo decks (again).

This matters to the evaluation in that if this archetype is being shut out by a hostile format, or a specific staple, then it would be nonviable. However, as we can see from the general texture of the format, agressive tempo is viable. Convoke shells, RG/R/RW Aggro, RW Auras, UW Aggro, and UW Oculus are all decks that play this card because of their gameplan facilitating it and are all by and large, viable.

Play Patterns

Here comes the part where I hate on this card. While we have found homes for it, and we have found that those homes are reasonable in terms of meta representation/gameplan, now is the part where we talk about how this card actually plays in game.

This card may have the most net-negative outcomes of any card I have ever seen in any card game ever at a legitimate competitive level.

Plus/Minus

Let's talk about what I mean by net-negative. I come from Yu-Gi-Oh, where part of a card's assessment is whether or not it goes "plus" or "minus", referring to generation of resources, which in Yu-Gi-Oh primarily refers to adding or subrtracting cards from your board or hand in order to pay costs versus how many cards they give/take away from your opponent as part of their resolution. This isn't strictly applicable to magic, because Magic has significantly more resources than Yu-Gi-Oh (think: mana, life totals, tempo, all of which matter much less in a game like Yu-Gi-Oh). As an example of what I mean, let's take a look at some very basic cards:

Here we have two cards, both of which are somewhat playable in standard, to serve as an example of what I mean by going plus in Magic, which also provide additional context as to how to translate that in Magic: the Gathering's mana system.

Opt does what the cards says, drawing a card, and allowing you to also take a look at one. From Opt, we can derive that, at instant speed, a card which serves to replace itself is worth slightly less than one mana, seeing as a card which replaces itself and allows some information about your next draw to be gained is worth exactly one mana. We will skip some of the minutiae, as leaving a card on top with the scry is worth nothing, and scrying to the bottom in certain situations can be worth as much as an entire card. In most situations, short topdecking, this card shows us replacing oneself at instant speed is again, worth slightly less than one mana on average, in a vacuum.

Quick Study draws two cards outright. Applying what we know from evaluating Opt, going +1 (Quick Study replaces itself, and then draws an extra card, leaving you "up" a card, or +1), we can derive the replacement of Quick Study is worth about one mana, and therefore going +1 is worth about 2 mana, give or take.

Obviously, these rules are not hard and fast nor definitive of overall power level, seeing as there are powerful cards historically which go actively negative (think Unmask, Force of Will), cards that go even which are extremely powerful (Thoughtseize, Leyline Binding), or cards that go massively plus which see almost no play (Overflowing Insight, Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur). That's when we have to talk about the other major axis our card game exists on which Yu-Gi-Oh does not, efficiency.

Efficiency

In Yu-Gi-Oh, ever card costs 0 mana, which makes evaluating cards on a +/- basis much easier than Magic: the Gathering. In Magic, we must also evaluate efficiency. We started to touch on this in the previous section, when we determined going +1 is approximately worth 2 mana, absent context. But short of deep-delving the concepts of efficiency historically and holistically (maybe in another article), let's address the axis on which Sheltered by Ghosts needs to be efficient.

Sheltered by Ghost, is, at its core, a kill spell. Kill spells historically, in standard, cost 2 mana and have a slight drawback, think Doom Blade, Ultimate Price, or current standard all-stars Go for the Throat and Get Lost. Now, obviously, there is more upside to Sheltered by Ghosts than just killing a creature. It does exile the creature, which occasionally matters (especially against red decks in this standard), and gives +1/+0 and lifelink, which is particularly relevant against red decks in this standard. In addition, secret text, but it does not only hit creatures, potentially taking care of problematic cards, particularly post-sideboard when people bring in permanent=based hate. The drawback on the card (in lieu of not hitting artifacts or giving your opponent map tokens) is that it requires a creature to be alive, and also gives your opponent a small window of interaction wherein the card is both very inefficient and negative value.

So what the hell happens when I actually cast this card, Kazi?

So, this is where we explore the problems (finally for realsies this time I promise) with this card. There is a lot of interaction in this standard, entirely at instant speed, and all of which is very live against Sheltered by Ghosts both in and outside of its vulnerability window. While this card shines against mono-red, a deck often encouraged to tap out in early turns in addition to spending removal quickly which does not universally kill all threats, against almost any other deck in the format (UB midrange, Bounce decks, Domain, White control) there is an abundance of removal which prevents this card from almost ever entering the battlefield safely as long as your opponent has a card or cards in hand. Beyond that, if your opponent does not have cards in hand, you and your opponent likely are drawing with few cards and a lot of mana, so their next removal spell will turn into a 2-for-1 and give them a threat while also removing whichever one you attached the spell to, and that's in the best-case situation where you had a creature on the battlefield while topdecking anyways.

Basically, the card is a living, breathing blowout. There are too many decks which actively hold mana up during the opponent's turn to make use of it consistently, in my opinion.

There are some slight exceptions. There are decks, like UW Oculus or RW Eerie Aggro, which actively invest maindeck slots in protecting their creatures, which have more reasons to play this. But these decks also have other weaknesses which this card does little to address, hence their own lack of popularity.

Slotting this in decks like UWR convoke, which is already vulnerable to boardwipes, or perhaps most egregiously, Esper Pixie which both actively wants to take its creatures/enchantments off of the battlefield and has access to Go for the Throat, or even in more fringe piles like Selesnya Cage or Azorius Flash just doesn't make any sense to me at all. Sure, playing the traditional removal spells doesn't have the upside of gaining life or exiling, but outside of the red decks, neither of these things matter enough to make up for the fact that this card so often just blows the user out of the water on the stack, or even just later in the game when the enchanted creature is eventually traded with. Even cards that don't hit the creature itself, but rather the enchantment, can lead to terrible situations, as they put a creature back onto the battlefield, especially in combat. This makes decisions for pushing damage (which to remind you, decks playing this card often want or even need to do) significantly more punishing than they would be with a cleaner kill spell. I understand this likely speaks to some of my skills as a Magic player, but I think there is something to be said for allowing yourself easier decisions, as correct decisions win matches.

When I look at the top decks in the format, I am presented with a myriad of options, but all of them pack instant speed removal, even those red aggressive decks Sheltered by Ghosts is so good against. All of them carry huge potential to make Sheltered by Ghosts the worst card you have ever seen. All of them carry reasonable targets, and even more reasonable, efficient removal at instant speed. I just can't bring myself to play this card in any of the decks I think traditionally would. This is especially true considering there two very strong options at the same cost (namely Get Lost and Soul Partition), which are nearly the same in terms of what they handle.

I will not register this card, at least in the current format. In all liklihood, I won't be registering the card in future formats as long as the instant speed removal suite remains somewhat strong. It's just way too hard to get value, and building your gameplan to manipulate the board state to enable this card, while essentially playing one behind as long as you don't feel safe casting it is just not palatable Magic at a competitive Standard level in my opinion. While I would usually consider myself a high-risk high-reward kind of player, I also sincerely value flexibility and motility, and cards like these which have a tendency to get easily turned around tend to limit the moves I can make.

TL;DR

"Sheltered by Ghosts, target my Rabbit"

"In response, Go for the Throat, target that Rabbit?"

"Shit"
*scoop cards run away*

FIN

 Hey, Magic spikes!

 Do you like violence? Do you like tempo Magic? Do you like unconventionally tilting red players? If you answered no to any of the above, get off this tab and go to work or something.

 For everyone else, welcome to another RCQ tournament report! This one, in particular, is unlike any that I've written before as I'll be covering three RCQs instead of just one in light of a hot 19-5 run I had recently that included three straight finals appearances and both Regional Championship invites for Minneapolis and Hartford. The first of the three will be covered in thorough detail with my usual sideboarding and gameplay philosophy, with more brief details to follow in the next two.

 Standard has been a fun puzzle to solve for most grinders this RCQ season, doubly so for anyone who's just now getting into standard in its recent resurgence alongside the release of Magic Foundations. Love to see it! Throughout said season, we've seen decks rise and fall in popularity as the matchup spreads adjust early volatility. Now that we have a clearer idea of what's top tier and descending (see Kazi's tier list for his take around Christmas), my personal deck choice for this season is a deck that was at one point thought to be hovering tier 1, but took some heavy hits in popularity points these last two months, partly due to its poor win percentage against the recent establishment of all three red decks currently popular in standard.

THE DECK

 Oculus?! But Prez, don't the red decks run right through this?! Well, they did for a while. On a personal note, I can only commit to one standard deck in paper at a time with a proper amount of testing due to nasty time constraints at work. Going through my initial testing runs to pick a deck to run for the season, I was close to committing to Mono White to put Golgari Midrange and Gruul Aggro through a grinder. About 80 matches later, I was satisfied with the reps and tried Azorius Oculus at the height of its popularity and decided I could maximize my performances with it best as the tempo-esque play patterns with running Phantom Interference, Into the Flood Maw, Picklock Prankster // Free the Fae, etc. already line up with my gameplay strengths in decision making and transformative sideboarding. I'm a tempo gamer at heart. Please refer to my first and second tournament reports on Bant Spirits (my pre-Logic Knot days) and my report playing Temur Rhinos for more details on that.

 Right as I lock on this deck back when it was on the early shell of running Sleight of Hand, Three Steps Ahead, and Soul Partition instead of some of the tech you see in the above list, Oculus takes a nosedive. Our best matchup (Golgari Midrange) is less present than I expected and red (already hard) is EVERYWHERE locally here in SoCal. To make things even worse, Foundations then gave red Burst Lightning, Boltwave, and Boros Charm. Now Boros is live and we're dying even faster. In the immediate aftermath of this, there was a lot of losing and plenty more regret. But time is not on my side this season and my choice has been made.

 Through a methodical process of sacrificing some win-percentage points against Domain and Mono White to keep up with the gravitating speed that Mono Red, Gruul, and now Boros are demanding from us, it became clear that the changes needed to be drastic. Keeping the three above cards in my list, going 4-1 in swiss at a recent event and still getting dunked on by Mono Red in Top 8 on the play twice sealed it. We started by trimming a 4th Into the Flood Maw and a 2nd Get Lost for some personal tech that's been showing up more in the broader scene recently—two Sheltered by Ghosts maindeck and eventually two more in the sideboard.

 This set the tone for the changes I'd be making in early versions of UW Oculus. Yes, it invites possible two-for-one blowouts because it's an aura, considering Golgari Midrange and Dimir Tempo. Yes, it's suboptimal compared to clean removal in other matchups, considering Mono White and Domain. However, the lifelink paired with an Abhorrent Oculus or a gassed-up Haughty Djinn and the nagging ward 2 clause will more than compensate for any potential pitfalls that come with it. Sheltered may not be an all-star in every standard deck that plays white, but with the prospect of being paired with two giant three drops in Oculus and Djinn (or the 8/8 octopus from Kiora for extra credit), the lifelink is maxed out here more than any other deck can reasonably try. I also had the benefit of already playing Sheltered by Ghosts as some cutting-edge tech in Azorius Spirits to literally solo Rakdos Aggro and anything else low to the ground the weekend of Regional Championship D.C and a 10K shortly after. In UW Oculus, your threats are hitting for even more lifelink damage, and with careful play, you can take advantage of a sheltered creature being a lightning rod for removal if you have a Phantom Interference camping in hand or simply have a decisive plan to put yourself over the top the following turn imagining your opponent taps out to deal with your initial threat. Some of the newly rooted play patterns playing Sheltered by Ghosts, and knowing when to take it out, will be exhibited in my coming matches.

 Accommodating this idea that we're answering the aggressive gravity of standard, we swapped the playset of Sleight of Hand for Founding the Third Path to be more proactive despite costing one more mana. Turn 2 Founding free casting Moment of Truth or Chart a Course will always make turn 3 hard card Abhorrent Oculus live. You can also accidentally mill a Helping Hand with a value creature camping with it to accelerate your plan out-of-hand. Next, we remove the Three Steps Ahead to play the new Kiora, the Rising Tide. Making an 8/8 is great, but this card is excellent at breathing new life into your hand if you're out of gas, need a reanimator target from the hand, or you're looting bad cards such as fighting through a Rest in Peace. Moment of Truth, although very synergistic, feels slow at times and less impactful than other cards doing a similar job, so we trimmed one to promote an Elspeth's Smite to the maindeck. Two in the main carry a nice amount of weight not just against red, but in the early turns against Dimir Tempo, Golgari Midrange, and the new Esper Pixie list roaming around, particularly all on the draw.

 The only other comment I'll make on this build before diving into my matches is that the one Kutzil's Flanker is an oddball. Ideally, I would've liked a 2nd Faerie Mastermind, but had trouble coming across one recently in paper. Flanker is still a flash threat that gains you life and solos people casting a turn 5 Sunfall, so it'll do.

PROLOGUE

 This event at Finch and Sparrow Games in Signal Hill, CA already looked like it would sport a tough field with several grinding players from two (friendly) rival Magic teams in Team Collector Legion (many of whom have pro tour/world championship experience) and Team KNG (Krazy Nick's Games) showing up, with me mostly on an island with my Logic Knot teammate Truong Nguyen. You may remember him from going 9-0 in day 1 at Regional Championship DC. But wait, there's more! Instead of what I thought would be a cap of 32 players like a normal RCQ, we instead get 62 in the building with six rounds of swiss.

ROUND 1 - WIN 2-1 VS Selesnya Angels (1-0)

 How fitting that my first match of the event is at table 1 against a regular on my reports in Team KNG member Guillermo Sida, who qualified with me in the Temur Rhinos report last year. And with a rogue deck too.

 I'm on the play, but I have to mulligan to five. The hand turns out to be a banger with a turn 2 Founding the Third Path into Chart a Course, discarding an Abhorrent Oculus, into turn 2 Helping Hand to Monster Reborn my Oculus back with Phantom Interference and Into the Flood Maw backup. Guillermo leads off with a Giada, Font of Hope, dreaming of getting a buffed up Resplendent Angel or Archangel of Tithes, but the tempo we've gained already from Oculus plus a slew of 2/2's and disruption plentiful quickly proves to be too much and we get under him to take game 1.

+2 Monastery Mentor
+2 Exorcise
+2 Sheltered by Ghosts
-2 Haughty Djinn
-2 Recommission
-2 Elspeth's Smite

 Here, we can discuss a common sideboarding pattern we see in UW Oculus. Not including the emergency button in Restless Anchorage, we have ten creatures in our deck that can reasonably carry us home. Most of them will bank on graveyard synergy game 1. Post-board, our opponent will hate out our graveyard with Rest in Peace, Ghost Vacuum, Tranquil Frillback, or even Leyline of the Void if they can. We'll also see more spot removal, which will significantly hurt if Oculus or Djinn get sniped down early and our hand isn't resilient, particularly against exile spells. With this in mind, we have to diversify, which means backing off the graveyard plan if some of our better cards can become liabilities. Kiora, the Rising Tide helps ease the punishment looting away inactive Helping Hands or Abhorrent Oculus', but we'll need more than that. We trim two Haughty Djinns and Recommissions in place of two Monastery Mentors to fight through graveyard hate and significantly weaken their 1-for-1 removal if we can generate multiple tokens. To pair with it, two Exorcises to exile anything problematic, including said grave hate. Another reason I double down on the Sheltered by Ghosts in this matchup since Guillermo will likely be casting one big creature spell at a time. We don't sideboard like this against decks that don't pack grave hate. It's okay to stay on plan against red decks, Dimir Tempo/Bounce, or the rare mirror match. For everything else, we're begging to get blown out if we're not responsible enough to respect our opponent's plan to kick us down early. Monastery Mentor and Exorcise are my dynamic duo to this approach.

 Game 2 on the draw starts fine, but sadly I was stuck with three lands for the majority of the game while Guillermo snowballs threats with Giada, Font of Hope into a Resplendent Angel that I couldn't answer in time. I see a late Rest in Peace shoot my graveyard and by the time I draw an Exorcise and a fourth land, there are too many threats, and my Oculus buffed by a Sheltered by Ghosts was only able to carry me for two combat trades with life totals bouncing up and down for both of us. Resplendent Angel successfully solo'd me.

 Game 3 is interesting. I'm proactive and able to show an early Haughty Djinn followed by an Abhorrent Oculus built from a turn 2 Third Path free casting a Moment of Truth. Sadly Guillermo quickly answers both with an Exorcise and Get Lost of his own, but he's not doing much else. I reanimate the Oculus, only to see it blown up again and then have the door shut with another late Rest in Peace. Thankfully, it's Monastery Mentor to the rescue with my own late interaction left in my hand to punch in over two turns with a fresh cast Sheltered by Ghosts and a Get Lost for later. At this point, we just smash face and get there. He eventually tries for a Resplendent Angel, but I'm able to push through with eight damage with Mentor, manifest dread creatures, and a monk token after removing it with a Get Lost. With him now low at five, I swing for lethal next turn and take the match after all trades are done.

ROUND 2 - LOSS 0-2 VS Dimir Tempo (1-1)

 This matchup is 50-50, with game 1 feeling favorable and a majority of my losses in game 1 coming from a turn 3 Kaito, Bane of Nightmares going unanswered, which Oculus folds to hard unless we're fortunate enough to have a Get Lost and claw back while down tempo and usually a card. Sadly that's exactly what happens here. I got rocked in this one.

 I'm on the draw for game 1, and although casting Founding the Third Path into a Free the Fae is normally fine and comes with some nice development in late turns, my opponent starts with the streamlined turn 1 Spyglass Siren, turn 2 Faerie Mastermind (Chart a Course hates this card), into turn 3 Kaito, Bane of Nightmares with Go for the Throat and Anoint with Affliction both ready to keep me down. Without Into the Flood Maw or Elspeth's Smite to slow this down, it's a lost cause. We win this matchup by blockading combat early with the above answers or a timely Phantom Interference and bulldozing with our threats on our own time before our opponent can passively generate value on offense with an early Kaito or Preacher of the Schism. I tried to get some counterplay to address Kaito, but my opponent had a slew of removal for everything I had and there's nothing to be done.

+1 Faerie Mastermind
+1 Kutzil's Flanker
+1 Monastery Mentor
+1 Sheltered by Ghosts
-3 Chart a Course
-1 Moment of Truth

 Sideboarding is tricky for this matchup and I'm still figuring it out to an extent, but the idea was to have more threats to run through the removal and add a Sheltered by Ghosts to win a tempo edge on the play. But in game 2 with a loose hand that has some nice potential buildup and two Sheltered by Ghosts that just needed some help in later turns, my opponent hits me with a turn 1 Duress that rips out my only cantrip spell in Moment of Truth with the rest of my hand now sitting passively. Turns out Duress is a pretty good Magic card. I draw an ugly pocket of lands and my opponent easily gets there with a hardcasted Kaito and Enduring Curiosity.

 Although this is the most convincing loss I've ever been handed in this matchup, it happens to all of us, and outside of taking these as a learning experience, I can't afford to dwell on past losses when there are four more rounds of swiss left to play. If anyone reading this has trouble with self-doubt in moments like this, understand that every game, match, and event is a new opportunity to do right by your cumulative experiences. You may even play your best Magic when your back is against the wall when you can be excited for what can go right (like, say, a come-from-behind hot streak) rather than projecting what can go wrong. My first RCQ win came from the last one of the season where I took a rare pubstomping loss in a favorable matchup round 1 and stormed back needing to win seven straight to snag the invite for RC Atlanta. Sometimes the added early pressure is what makes it fun.

ROUND 3 - WIN 2-0 VS Mono Red (2-1)

 We have a clear path to winning against the red decks. Reanimate or perish. With Elspeth's Smite and Into the Flood Maw as our one-mana anchors, we have to strictly beeline for a quick reanimator turn with a turn 2 Chart a Course (or turn 3 Kiora, the Rising Tide) into reanimator spell or find our creatures blind from the top four of the library off a Free the Fae, then hold the line until we get there. The two maindeck Sheltered by Ghosts will go online faster this way as well. Founding the Third Path is an excellent proactive kickstarter for both variations. Any other approach is too simply too slow, to the point where I'm willing to mulligan more aggressively to stay on plan. Banking on tempo Magic with Phantom Interference (unless we have nothing else) feels suboptimal for interacting especially on the draw and Moment of Truth is less efficient under aggro pressure than Chart and Free for what we're doing. Free gets you one more card in the graveyard and lets you see one more card off the top, while Chart picks creatures out of the hand and Moment doesn't. Funny how Moment of Truth is a bridge between the two in a way, but it's still the card I'm least excited about here between the three.

 Our plan rewards us here in game 1 on the draw. Thankfully also having an Elspeth's Smite to take out a turn 1 Hired Claw, I go turn 2 Founding the Third Path into a Free the Fae, milling away an Abhorrent Oculus in the process, then Monster Reborn-ing it back with a Helping Hand from my starting seven and immediately exiling a Screaming Nemesis by sliding a Sheltered by Ghosts onto the Oculus with my other two mana and bringing up a manifest dread blocker on my opponent's upkeep. The 2/2's are nice if we're racing, but I'm much more excited to have them as blockers to preserve my life total and check the opponent for a Monstrous Rage. I'm still getting clocked hard with my opponent having the Rage and still having a decent board, putting me from 11 to 5. However, with Abhorrent Oculus already being an absolute unit as a 5/5 flying blocker maker, now having six power and lifelink, we've maximized our gains with Sheltered by Ghosts and despite the rest of my hand being somewhat passive, two combats with the big eye immediately shut down any counterplay.

+3 Temporary Lockdown
+2 Sheltered by Ghosts
+1 Kutzil's Flanker
+1 Faerie Mastermind
-3 Moment of Truth
-3 Phantom Interference
-1 Haughty Djinn

 We get better post-board. The impact our new cards have in place of Moment of Truth and Phantom Interference as anchors for our reanimator approach will do great work. Faerie Mastermind and Kutzil's Flanker are flash threats that we can stick a quick Sheltered by Ghosts onto since our opponents will be tapping out often and very likely not calculator for combat transforming with the lifelink with what they don't see during their own turn. Keep in mind that the red decks will be more reactive with packing Lithomantic Barrage and Gruul also having Pawpatch Formation, but that also means fewer spells going to our face to make room for this. To play around a potentially back-breaking Lithomantic Barrage, consider prioritizing a Recommission onto Abhorrent Oculus instead of mana efficiency with Helping Hand to make Oculus an immediate untapped blocker and a 6/6 to put it out of Barrage range.

 Game 2 isn't as explosive on my end, but I have an Elspeth's Smite and Into the Flood Maw to buy me time and while the hand doesn't curve out as we dreamed, a turn 3 Kiora, the Rising Tide followed by a turn 4 Sheltered by Ghosts is enough to solo our opponent for four lifelink damage at a time going from 11 to 15 until we're ready to hardcast an Abhorrent Oculus with some 2/2 blockers on the way despite our opponent going surprisingly wide again. Lithomantic Barrage snipes the Oculus eventually, but another Sheltered by Ghosts on a 2/2 now makes the total crackback with lifelink at 7 to bring my opponent from 10 to 3. I'm tapped out at 22 life and although my opponent has an impressive hailmary with a few Monstrous Rage targets, his team can only max out at 19 damage to put me to 3 and I take the match to stay alive.

ROUND 4 - WIN 2-1 VS Gruul Aggro (3-1)

 Gutcheck time. My opponent is Mythic Championship II winner Eli Loveman from Team Collector Legion.

 Following the same approach as our previous match, my hand is very strong with a Founding the Third Path, Chart a Course, Sheltered by Ghosts, Helping Hand, and three lands. Any three-mana creature puts us over the top. I've also won the die roll and was lucky to see Eli mulligan to five. Sure enough, we go turn 2 Founding into Chart, seeing a Haughty Djinn. Turn 3 reanimated beefed up Djinn enchanted by Sheltered by Ghosts quickly creates an insurmountable threat.

+3 Temporary Lockdown
+2 Sheltered by Ghosts
+1 Kutzil's Flanker
+1 Faerie Mastermind
-3 Moment of Truth
-3 Phantom Interference
-1 Haughty Djinn

 Game 2 is...well...not great.  Solid hand on plan, but no turn 1 interaction and I don't have a Temporary Lockdown to even consider staying alive as Eli fights back with turn 1 Heartfire Hero into turn 2 Manifold Mouse, clocking me with a 2/2 double striking hero. I develop with a Founding the Third Path into a Free the Fae as Eli domes me with an Emberheart Challenger and Monstrous Rage onto the double striking Heartfire Hero to immediately put me from 16 down to 1 with a Rockface Village still threatening hasty lethal. We don't beat that unanswered.

 Very similar to game 1, however, I'm able to safely answer early and get a turn 3 Djinn online (hardcasting this time, I believe) as a blocker, and taking advantage of a slow start with a few one mana creatures by looting some cards to fill up the graveyard before sealing it again with a turn 4 Sheltered by Ghosts to solo mostly anything that comes our way.

ROUND 5 - WIN 2-0 VS Orzhov Pixie-Viper (4-1)

 Another interesting deck from our opponent in our second-to-last round of swiss. (Comparable list here, not my opponent's exact 75.) With a similar shell to Esper Pixie, the deck looks to combine cheap interaction and enchantments to unlock big payoffs with Rottenmouth Viper, Zoraline, Cosmos Caller, and Braids, Arisen Nightmare. Spoiler alert, I see none of those game 1.

 My hand is a little weird on the play game 1 with two surveil lands, two Oculus, Haughty Djinn, Helping Hand, and Chart a Course. The reanimator plan will be alive and well early if I'm playing against red again, but the follow-up could be anything depending on what I draw next. Could even be slow if I draw no more lands and the opponent answers me early.

 That said, with no disrespect intended to my opponent, I wish you could've seen the astonishingly horrified look on his face as he casts turn 1 Hopeless Nightmare and I gladly discard an Abhorrent Oculus into a turn 2 Helping Hand.

 It gets worse. With the first Oculus unanswered, turn 3 I draw a second Helping Hand and cheat out the 2nd Oculus after looting it away with pre-combat Chart a Course. Immediately unlosable.

+2 Exorcise
+2 Monastery Mentor
+2 Temporary Lockdown
+1 Sheltered by Ghosts
-2 Haughty Djinn
-2 Recommission
-2 Phantom Interference
-1 Moment of Truth

 Problem is, I didn't see much else in game 1 aside from a Nurturing Pixie and Novice Inspector, so I need to guess some. If I were to expect something like Optimistic Scavenger or Deep-Cavern Bat if it's mostly cheap creatures, I want a few Temporary Lockdowns. The easier assumption was that Rest in Peace and Leyline of the Void are possibly live options, so by the rule of thumb, we swap doubles of Haughty Djinn and Recommission for Monastery Mentor and Exorcise to fight through it. In hindsight weeks later seeing the list now, I would've wanted Faerie Mastermind and Kutzil's Flanker to have more threats instead of Temporary Lockdown.

 My opponent stays on plan in game 2 with cards like Bandit's Talent and Nurturing Pixie but doesn't have anything imminently threatening me aside from a Zoraline, Cosmos Caller, which I shoot down quickly with a Founding the Third Path into freecasting Get Lost. There's no reanimator spell for a little while, but without seeing the Rottenmouth Viper, the rest of the game is mostly uneventful as I overwhelm the opponent with a hardcasted Abhorrent Oculus and Monastery Mentor, neither of which my opponent can answer effectively on time before snowballing.

 At this point, both myself and my teammate Truong are 4-1, but there are still a lot of X-1's alive, with about twelve or thirteen players overall still above the cut. Like many of our RCQs this season, we're not even close to a clean cut for Top 8 and everyone except for the four players at 4-0-1 have to play. Brutal.

ROUND 6 - WIN 2-1 VS Selesnya Tokens (5-1)

 Interesting matchup spread in this RCQ so far.

 Not to be confused with Mono-White control splashing green, my opponent built a surprisingly effective homebrew that comes with a creature spread including Sharp-Eyed Rookie, Seraphic Steed, Bristlebud Farmer, and Sandstorm Salvager in addition to some of the more familiar cards like Caretaker's Talent, Carrot Cake, etc. accelerated by Llanowar Elves. It's a midrange-esque approach that happens to have a lot of answers to aggro decks and packs good blockers.

 I'm on the play in a slow paced game 1. I saw glimpses of my opponent's deck across from me in the previous round, but still had vague expectations. While I'm developing for future turns simply looting with Free the Fae and Moment of Truth early, my opponent leads off with a turn 2 Sharp-Eyed Rookie followed by Sandstorm Salvager, getting a few combats at me before I'm able to eventually hardcast an Abhorrent Oculus. Surprisingly, my opponent didn't have an immediate removal spell for it and instead jammed the Bristlebud Farmer. I get to untap for my turn, but if Oculus is removed, I'm now somehow worse off despite having a few 2/2's with no exciting creatures underneath. With an Into the Flood Maw sitting in hand, I decided the best course of action was to play out a 0/4 Haughty Djinn and bounce my opponent's Farmer to slow him down so that whatever equalizer he's setting up for can't race my simple plan of getting there with the big eye. I'm now missing land drops, so Haughty Djinn will also secretly be an anchor for me to try double-spelling. Turns out my opponent just never had answers for the Oculus or Djinn and after recasting Farmer and going from 15 to 4 on my next combat with help from Djinn, he scoops it up and now intuition has to take us into post-boarding game 2.

+3 Temporary Lockdown
+2 Exorcise
+2 Monastery Mentor
+1 Faerie Mastermind
+1 Sheltered by Ghosts
-3 Phantom Interference
-2 Recommission
-2 Haughty Djinn
-2 Moment of Truth

 In hindsight, this was overboarding. Two each of Exorcise, Monastery Mentor, and Temporary Lockdown would have been fine.

 Game 2 goes south fast with my opponent leading off with a turn 1 Llanowar Elves into turn 2 Rest in Peace. I cast Chart a Course to look for something to deal with the early grave hate and loot away a Helping Hand and find a Get Lost to later answer it. My opponent develops more with a Sharp-Eyed Rookie and Seraphic Steed. In what I thought would be an equalizing position after Founding the Third Path, free casting Free the Fae, and loading up for a hardcasted Oculus on the way with a Phantom Interference sitting in my hand ready to counter whatever my opponent plays next before I start fighting back, my opponent throws a gut puncher at me in a Thrun, Breaker of Silence. Conveniently uncounterable and immune to my Exorcise in hand while my life total is already at 15 starting down two other creatures. Oculus isn't enough after my opponent shows an Exorcise of their own and I'm forced into bad blocks, then eventual death.

-1 Temporary Lockdown
+1 Phantom Interference

 I'm on the play this time, and although my opponent starts with another early Llanowar Elves and Rest in Peace, we're okay this time as my hand has other threats in and Monastery Mentor, with Kiora, the Rising Tide also in hand to loot away bad situational cards. Things get weird though, as I start getting mana flooded aside from this and my opponent fails to find a third land. With my opponent having a possibly problematic Sharp-Eyed Rookie if they can get going, I trade it off in combat with Kiora and slowly answer his one-by-one small threats with a Monastery Mentor, but I now only have lands and a super dead Oculus in hand, and that Rest in Peace across from me is hurting. Somehow though, we're winning. After my opponent eventually shows me a Sandstorm Salvager that I can't answer right away, I breathe a sign of relief as I topdeck an Exorcise to finally exile the Rest in Peace and get a monk token as a bonus with Monastery Mentor on board, also unlocking a Founding the Third Path I drew earlier.

 My opponent topdecks another Rest in Peace.

 Now I need to bank on Monastery Mentor or I'm dead lost when my opponent starts hitting land drops. Drawing a Faerie Mastermind is a good start, but the advantage will take some time. Somewhere along the line here, my opponent makes a subtly fatal mistake. Finally hitting another land and casting another random small creature, my opponent points a Get Lost my direction, but blowing up Mastermind instead of Mentor to deny me card advantage with it's activated ability. Understandable, but many of my draws are still live with Mentor in a deck full of cantrips and the map tokens will now help me get there in both draws and combat. Sure enough, my next draw is a Chart a Course into a Sheltered by Ghosts to exile his biggest creature (with multiple token and prowess triggers) and start pushing forward in combat. My opponent now goes to 10 and is unable to come back from another round of prowess triggers from my mini-monk army. During post-match discussions, we conclude that killing Mentor instead was the correct play, but I'm slightly better in this endgame regardless. Stressful game 3 for sure.

 Truong won his win-and-in too! After all of the blood, sweat, and disproportionate amount of tears after back-to-back Rest in Peace games, we're in. Playing an extra match rewards you with being a top 4 seed to be on the play in the quarterfinals 99% of the time, and I'm super excited entering Top 8...

TOP 8

 ...as the 5th seed...

 ...yup. Miraculously still not on the play in the quarterfinals. Two 4-0-1's played it out for the 1st seed and 2nd through 5th go to the 5-1's, whereas I had the worst tiebreakers. Outstanding.

 In a twist, Truong and I are now playing against two members of Team KNG. Don't you just love a good esports rivalry? The other seven decide they want to split prizing evenly in Top 8, and Seyhak asks if I'm down to make it unanimous. I say no to splitting and the boys are big mad. Whatever. We ball. 🏀

QUARTERFINALS - WIN 2-1 VS Domain

 Likely my toughest matchup, BUT WE STILL BALL! 🏀🏀🏀 (With some luck.)

 Although Phantom Interference shines here for the timely Overlord of the Mistmoors and Sunfall, we have many bad cards in game 1 compared to our opponent having monumental haymakers that don't care what value we generate from an Abhorrent Oculus or big graveyard payoffs. As someone who qualified on Domain last year, I don't think the deck is as well positioned as it was then, but the top-end is still insane once they get to the five mana range.

 I mulligan to six, but Jesus goes to five. Kickstarting with a Founding the Third Path into Moment of Truth trying to find a Phantom Interference, I get one and my graveyard is ready for action later. Jesus plays an Up the Beanstalk and Leyline Binding on an early Haughty Djinn with some compensation for the two mulligans. I then jam a Helping Hand to cheat out an Abhorrent Oculus and pair it with another Haughty Djinn. He cycles a Herd Migration and I'm getting the feeling that he doesn't have a Sunfall, so I counter a Get Lost targeting Oculus with my hand now sitting proactive with another Oculus and even a Restless Anchorage if I get boardwiped. I do some cheap looting with Haughty Djinn online and have a big combat putting him from 23 down to 8. Spot removal doesn't prevent lethal anymore and Jesus doesn't have the Sunfall to prolong the game as we take a rare game 1 W.

+4 Negate
+2 Exorcise
+2 Monastery Mentor
+1 Kutzil's Flanker
+1 Faerie Mastermind
-2 Elspeth's Smite
-2 Into the Flood Maw
-2 Recommission
-2 Sheltered by Ghosts
-1 Moment of Truth
-1 Founding the Third Path

 I have to board in ten cards for this matchup. Going to the opposite route of discarding flexibility against the red decks, we need to lean into it here with a good grip of counterspells and flash threats so that Sunfall doesn't come with a death certificate, also taking into account that Domain can still play Rest in Peace. Elspeth's Smite and Into the Flood Maw are obviously bad for what Domain brings to the table and we need clean interaction with Exorcise over maximized punishments here in particular off Sheltered by Ghosts. We're still mostly on our normal game, but our interaction is transformed post-board to better deal with what our opponent wants in our answer-or-die turns before we can turn the corner.

 If you have doubts, bear with me on a bizarre analogy and imagine a situation I had recently on New Year's weekend. You're working retail and it's getting busy. Domain players, in the context of this matchup (respectfully), are like the annoying chuds that will prey on you to break their $100 bill for ~$20 orders. ̶Y̶o̶u̶ ̶s̶p̶i̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶i̶r̶ ̶f̶a̶c̶e̶.̶ You ask them if they have literally any other bills or have any cards. They of course lie and say no, and your boss forces you to make it happen. Two more gross boomer chuds come in doing the same thing and your $20's and $10's are evaporated. Now you pay a heavier price playing from behind having to make do with all of your $5's and $1's in mass quantities. In coins, run out of quarters, and you have to run through handfuls of dimes and nickels and bleed your register dry of everything else even faster because that's not what the dimes and nickels are there for. Chaos ensues, the sea levels rise, Bitcoin goes to zero, and life sucks.

 Cards like Overlord of the Mistmoors, Sunfall, and Zur, Eternal Schemer are the theoretical $100 bill haymakers coming in succession to put you behind quickly, but now you're well prepared in "$20's" if necessary post-board to accommodate the rest of the deck, especially when double-spelling, provided you hit your land drops. Make no mistake, though. This matchup is still tricky.

 I find some nice counterplay in game 2 with a Faerie Mastermind equalizing card draw after a turn 2 Up the Beanstalk from Jesus and a turn 3 Kiora, the Rising Tide to help streamline my hand better, but sadly this time Jesus has a powerful response in casting an Impending Overlord of the Hauntwoods, followed by Impending Overlord of the Mistmoors to clog the field. I'm able to cast Helping Hand to bring out an Oculus around turn 4, but after presenting a well-timed Zur, Eternal Schemer to get his Overlords online faster. Jesus proves that his curve is too strong this time and we're going to game 3. A good start falling just short of a great one by the opposition. Jesus is a very capable player that isn't going away quietly.

 Game 3 turns out to be one of those gritty bangers where we're glad we don't have the 50-minute time limit. Without going into all of the many details of this beautiful mess, my counterspell representation keeps Domain in check until we both get deep into our land drops, where thankfully with Up the Beanstalk and Rest in Peace out of the way, we get into a chaotic boardstate where Jesus eventually squeaks in a Zur, Eternal Schemer, with the green and white Overlords both ready to punch me again, only this time, I've looted and reanimated an Abhorrent Oculus, Haughty Djinn, and a Monastery Mentor with some counterplay prepared with a handful of manifest dread creatures (with a second Djinn hidden) and future monk tokens on standby. I'm holding on for dear life to my two Negates holding in hand as we get to a point where either of us could die to crackback with me having multiple monk tokens backed by my usual suspect creatures, while Jesus is about to punch me with deathtouch lifelink goliaths backed by Zur. We're taking about five minutes each to map out our potential combats. He points a Get Lost at the Oculus and gets one big combat in with both overlords and some insect tokens held back as blockers to put himself 11 back up to 22 from the lifelink. I trade some of my staples and take some hits to go to 10, but my crackback is insane after a sudden epiphany. Jesus doesn't have many cards left in hand and I no longer need the continuity of Negate, as a Sunfall or Split Up leaves Jesus in a losing endgame with me having an Abhorrent Oculus and Kiora, the Rising Tide for next turn. Now willing to tap out, I go Founding the Third Path on chapter 3 immediately grabbing a Get Lost from the graveyard to shoot down Zur. Now lifelink and deathtouch are both off the table.

 Important to note, casting Founding the Third Path into another spell gives Monastery Mentor two prowess/token triggers instead of one. My crackback combat going wide with the tokens and some manifest dread creatures domes Jesus for 15 damage to go to 7.

 Jesus doesn't attack, and after he runs out the last of his hand with a Leyline Binding on Monastery Mentor, the final nail in the coffin is another Founding the Third Path freecasting Exorcise to exile a blocker, and the team has just enough to put him to zero no matter how he blocks. Great match.

TOP 4

 This time I'm willing to split in Top 4, we each get about $275. With this event being a two-slotter, I'm now on the draw playing for the Minneapolis invite against Eric Kearns, the number one seed at 5-0-1 who has been absolutely shredding people on Gruul all day. Excellent player and a good guy.

SEMIFINALS - WIN 2-0 VS Gruul Aggro

 Eric starts solidly with a Hired Claw and Manifold Mouse, but our go-to play pattern quickly shuts the deck down again. Turn 2 Chart a Course discarding Abhorrent Oculus, turn 3 Helping Hand bring back Oculus, immediately enchant with Sheltered by Ghosts, and win in my next combat. Gruul can't deal with this in game 1.

+3 Temporary Lockdown
+2 Sheltered by Ghosts
+1 Kutzil's Flanker
+1 Faerie Mastermind
-3 Moment of Truth
-3 Phantom Interference
-1 Haughty Djinn

 Being born and raised in northern Wisconsin near Minneapolis and a game away from the invite, I couldn't help but think of all the family and acquaintances I haven't seen since I left. I wanted this opportunity to go and I couldn't hide my stirring emotions much anymore.

 Eric has an interesting start on a mulligan to six with a turn 1 Hired Claw into two Innkeeper's Talents. In response to the second Talent to slow him down a bit, I bounce one with Into the Flood Maw and give him a fish in case he wants to commit his full next turn to recast Talent just so I can hit land drops and slam the door on him again. I cast a Founding the Third Path freecasting Free the Fae to prepare hardcasting Oculus, then off the surveil trigger off a Meticulous Archive, I see a Temporary Lockdown sitting on top. The finish line is in sight.

 Next turn we slam it after Eric runs out the 2nd Talent, and although he doesn't have a Pawpatch Formation for Lockdown, he does have a Lithomantic Barrage for the turn 5 Oculus. With the board clear though, I eventually find a Helping Hand for the big eye, and when I go to manifest dread, the creature I set face down is a second Oculus, sealing the deal for the invite at long last.

FINALS - WIN 2-0 VS Golgari Midrange

 Seyhak Uy from Team Collector Legion wins the other invite and he doesn't care much for the lanyard the way I do, so we do a slight prizing renegotiation to where I can have the lanyard for my collection and we can move on with our weekend. Very cool.

 Golgari Midrange has felt favorable from my experiences, especially in game 1. Cut Down, Mosswood Dreadknight, and Sentinel of the Nameless City are mostly non-factors even when paired with their wealth of removal and we don't necessarily have any poor cards in the maindeck for this matchup. If Seyhak and I were to play it out, here's how I would have boarded.

+2 Exorcise
+2 Monastery Mentor
+1 Faerie Mastermind
-2 Recommission
-2 Haughty Djinn
-1 Sheltered by Ghosts

 Simple diversifying again. Cards to watch out for are Vivien Reid, Tranquil Frillback, and possibly Liliana of the Veil (especially on the draw).

 After some R&R in Long Beach before heading home, we're ready to shoot for the 2nd qualification next week. Going to RC Hartford two weeks after RC Minneapolis would be fun.

 These next two brief tournament reports originally weren't supposed to be a part of this article. However, upon making the finals again twice since this tournament, I wanted to share some details from both events to reinforce the results. I would never intend to come off as hyperbolic from one good event and present this as "hurrhurr just play Oculus good deck unga bunga". Details in gameplay and sideboarding from both events below are mostly redundant in comparison to the Finch & Sparrow RCQ, so I'll only be sharing thoughts here in brief stints.

WEEK 2

 One week after winning the Minneapolis invite, with much less pressure already having one in hand, we begin the quest for the Hartford invite in Anaheim with many of the same players we saw the previous week. There are no changes to the 75 for now, but there have been tempting ideas with Authority of the Consuls and Split Up. This event was nearly 32 players with five rounds of swiss in a one-slotter.

ROUND 1: 👎👍👍 VS Mono Red (1-0)
ROUND 2: 👍👍 VS Golgari Midrange (2-0)
ROUND 3: 👍👎👎 VS Gruul Aggro (2-1)
ROUND 4: 👎👍👍 VS Azorius Omniscience (3-1)
ROUND 5: ID VS Azorius Omniscience (3-1-1)
8th seed for Top 8.

 My match against Golgari Midrange was interesting in game 1, with both of us going about four or five land drops without committing any creatures, which is favorable for me with instant speed proactivity in Free the Fae and Moment of Truth. After many trades of creatures and removal, my opponent has a massive maindeck Scavenging Ooze going unanswered and threatening to run out a Virtue of Persistence but has no cards left in hand. I eventually hardcast an Oculus and have plenty of chumpblockers sitting at only 7 life with the board getting clogged with creatures. The funny finish to this game was manifest dreading a Haughty Djinn that turned out to be an 18/4 with only three cards left in my library when I snuck in for lethal. This game probably went for about thirty minutes. Game 2 is much simpler as I outvalue my opponent's removal with an early loot and reanimate on Oculus and a Kiora, the Rising Tide getting me an 8/8.

 My win-and-in match was against my Logic Knot teammate Ben Ejnes on Azorius Omniscience Combo. He insists in jest that I'm playing the worse blue-white reanimating deck of the two. I quickly lose game 1 mistakenly keeping a hand of creatures and a Recommission, but no action, thinking I was afforded more time on the play and Ben mulling to 6. Immediately punished past the first Phantom Interference as I simply had nothing to offer on board.

+4 Negate
+1 Kutzil's Flanker
-2 Elspeth's Smite
-2 Sheltered by Ghosts
-1 Into the Flood Maw

 In game 2, I'm able to push through with a Kiora, the Rising Tide, and an 8/8 the following turn from a nice turn 2 Founding the Third Path freecasting Free the Fae and counterspell backup with the benefit of being on the play and Ben still needing to develop to get an Omniscience in the graveyard.

 Game 3 is more of the same except with a funny interaction from Kutzil's Flanker accidentally being an amazing inclusion against this matchup. I'm slower in pressuring Ben's life total in this one, so by the time we both get to about six land drops, he tried to drop the hammer on my counterspells by casting a Grand Abolisher to go for the Abuelo's Awakening combo through a Negate that he knows about. Instead, I flash in Kutzil's Flanker in response to Ben casting the Grand Abolisher to exile his graveyard. He tries to counter it with a Confounding Riddle, where I now use the Negate. Ben is behind on board with 8 life and has to start all over getting the combo online, which is enough for me to get in for the game 3 W.

 Four spots are left for Top 8 with six 3-1's alive, but my opponent and I have much better tiebreakers than the other four that have to play, so we take the intentional draw anyway to lock up the 7th and 8th seeds.

TOP 8, WEEK 2

(Full decklists can be found here.)

QUARTERFINALS: 👍👎👍 VS Mono Red (1st seed)
SEMIFINALS: 👎👍👍 VS Gruul Aggro (5th seed)
FINALS: 👎👎 VS Selesnya Control (2nd seed)

 I said no to splitting in Top 8 again, where Wappa Hamada from Team Collector Legion says no to splitting in Top 4 and the finals with me. First time I've been a part of a pure no-split event. 

 Getting the win against 1st seed on Mono Red on the draw felt nice, bouncing his endgame blockers (buffed up Heartfire Hero and Screaming Nemesis) with two Into the Flood Maws to clear lethal in game 1 and sticking an 8/8 Octopus with a Sheltered by Ghosts to seal game 3.

 I'm faced with with a familiar foe in Top 4. Eric Kearns on Gruul Aggro again. Temporary Lockdown and Sheltered by Ghosts felt amazing blockading combat as usual in games 2 and 3, but Eric gets me with a clever line in game 1. With me at 4 life and Eric having very little gas left in a close contest, he knows that I'm packing two maindeck Sheltered by Ghosts as well as other scary things with a loaded graveyard next turn. With me only having one mana open, he decided that he wants to close out the game immediately if I don't have an Into the Flood Maw by making use of a very passive Obliterating Bolt sitting in his hand. Bolting his own Screaming Nemesis for exactly lethal. Can't even be mad. That's funny.

 I'm against a Mono White Control shell splashing green for Up the Beanstalk and Overlord of the Hauntwoods in the finals, a tough matchup. I'm able to put up a decent fight through possible Sunfall turns by consistently spewing out an Oculus, Djinn, and Kiora in succession to not get blown out in any one turn. Sadly, Wappa is ready with a nice wealth of spot removal and eventually adequate blockers from an Overlord of the Mistmoors.

+4 Negate
+2 Exorcise
+2 Monastery Mentor
+1 Kutzil's Flanker
+1 Faerie Mastermind
-2 Elspeth's Smite
-2 Into the Flood Maw
-2 Recommission
-2 Sheltered by Ghosts
-1 Moment of Truth
-1 Founding the Third Path

 Same sideboarding philosophy as with playing against Domain, we have to be transformative and more flexible. Game 2 is better for me, with Wappa not having Up the Beanstalk early and I'm sitting comfortably with a proactive Founding the Third Path backed by Exorcise and Negate ready in case of Rest in Peace or something else crazy. I run some creatures out again, we trade cards, and right when I think I'm winning, Wappa draws an Up the Beanstalk and Sunfall to get back into it with his Overlord of the Hauntwoods coming alive. I have decent counterplay with a Monastery Mentor and monk tokens refueling my board with a greatly timed Faerie Mastermind drawing me a bunch of cards, by I'm eventually overwhelmed in Wappa's second wind and I lose in the finals of a one-slotter. Bummer, but was very satisfied with the run and prizing gained overall.

WEEK 3

 Fresh off the back-to-back finals appearances, we return to the eastern Los Angeles area for a two-slotter with some added confidence and a new inclusion to the 75. For this last event, I tried Unsummon over Into the Flood Maw to bounce my key creatures in the face of spot removal. We also now have a cute line of bouncing one of the manifest dread 2/2s if I find something effective enough that I'd want to cast it instead of being a vanilla 2/2, like say a Helping Hand. Call it results-oriented, but there's rarely been times I've wanted the "gift a fish" clause of Flood Maw as the benefit of not playing Unsummon straight up. I'm joined in this event by three teammates: Ben Ejnes, and the father-daughter duo of Adam and Dana Fischer. We have 34 players for this RCQ, meaning six rounds of swiss.

ROUND 1: 👍👍 VS Gruul Aggro (1-0)
ROUND 2: 👎👎 VS Gruul Aggro (1-1)
ROUND 3: 👍👍 VS Gruul Aggro (2-1)
ROUND 4: 👍👍 VS Selesnya Tokens (3-1)
ROUND 5: 👍👍 VS Dimir Bounce (4-1)
ROUND 6: ID VS Gruul Aggro (4-1-1)
6th seed for Top 8.

 Bad event. Didn't play against Gruul enough.

 In all seriousness, playing against the uprising Collector's Cage version of Selesnya Tokens in round 4 was a nice challenge (obviously a Temporary Lockdown matchup) where Monastery Mentor can hold down the city when snowballing a wall of monk tokens if the opponent goes wide. Dimir Bounce feels unlosable in game 1 from my brief experiences against it, with post-board feelings still being evaluated similarly to Dimir Tempo. In game 1, Bounce needs Go for the Throat or Floodpits Drowner plus activate to deal with an early Oculus or Djinn. Cut Down and Nowhere to Run are there for the smaller creature's aggression, which isn't what we're doing. It's an interesting matchup in that although the deck can be aggressive, Temporary Lockdown is secretly bad against Dimir Bounce, inviting negative value if hit with a This Town Ain't Big Enough or Tishana's Tidebinder.

TOP 8, WEEK 3

 Oh my God, Dana's so wholesome. Not gonna lie, my heart melted a little bit here. 💙💛 Anyway, I've said no to splitting yet again in Top 8, so let's get this bread.

QUARTERFINALS: 👍👎👍 VS Dimir Bounce (3rd seed)
SEMIFINALS: 👍👍 VS Gruul Aggro (2nd seed)
FINALS: 👎👎 VS Azorius Omniscience (4th seed)

 We have an unorthodox 90 minute timer for our playoff matches this time. That said, my quarterfinal match becomes an insane slugout in game 3 that pushed us to a whopping 72 minutes spent on our clock. Proactive early Oculus turns feel great against Dimir Bounce's poor situational removal selection in game 1 as already discussed despite being on the draw as the 6th seed.

+2 Monastery Mentor
+1 Faerie Mastermind
+1 Kutzil's Flanker
-2 Recommission
-1 Haughty Djinn
-1 Sheltered by Ghosts

 My opponent takes game 2 off a turn 1 Stormchaser's Talent and turn 2 Fear of Isolation bouncing Talent with better better removal eventually clearing the way for my opponent to chip in with slowly escalating damage until his team is too wide for me to survive.

 Game 3, on the play, devolved from a subtly tempo battle with me having a Faerie Mastermind drawing cards with my opponent trying to crash through with an Enduring Curiosity combat turn, into a clogged chaotic mess full of manifest dread creatures, monk tokens from an unanswered Monastery Mentor, repeatedly bounced enchantments like Hopeless Nightmare and Stormchaser's Talent, and combat tricks galore from both players. It was something akin to where you leave your two dogs alone in the living room peacefully for five minutes and return to them violently turning your furniture inside out and eating your plants.

 Like the Domain match two weeks prior, we're taking about five minutes each thinking through our winning lines like a classical chess match with neither of us missing any land drops. I'm trying to milk my value off an Abhorrent Oculus making 2/2s and surprise blockers thanks to Monastery Mentor while my opponent, still having about four cards in hand, is looping Stormchaser's Talent's level two activation with This Town Ain't Big Enough and Hopeless Nightmare to deplete what's left of my hand. With my opponent perpetually threatening This Town Ain't Big Enough paired with Floodpits Drowner to invite me having a mental breakdown overextending my blockers in combat, we're finally able to get in through the fliers showing a second Oculus off the manifest dread from the first, paired with Faerie Mastermind and a 7/6 Haughty Djinn after my opponent finally cracks and miscounts their mana mapping our their last turn after a 70-minute banger. Without exaggerating, there had been about five combats in a row from each of us where we could've lost the game immediately with any single subtle mistake. We love matches like this and my opponent was a class act.

 After taking the invite in Top 4, the dream is realized and we're double Q'd! My finals opponent and I decide to play a laid-back match for the lanyard. With my opponent on Azorius Omniscience Combo, he curves out nicely in both games getting Omniscience in the yard early, and has two copies of Abuelo's Awakening to fight through my first counterspell both games despite me having a proactive start putting him to 2 life in game 2. Gameplay is simple playing against this deck. Sometimes they get there early, sometimes I have the answers. My opponent built his deck well for the multiple red decks in the room, apparently maindecking Split Up and Day of Judgement; which gave him an edge against me as well.

CONCLUSION

 Azorius Oculus had been poorly positioned for a while before overhauling the old core of the deck. As exciting as these recent results have been against high-quality players in a generally aggressive format, I'm aware that I'm deviating from a lot of the norms you'll find on MTGTop8 and can only recommend this 75 if you're somewhat familiar with some of the tempo-intricate play patterns of Oculus already, coming from about 170 matches on Arena myself up to this point. Or of course, if you're just tired of getting dunked on by the red decks and don't have the patience to pilot Mono White. The two Elspeth's Smites maindeck have felt great against a majority of the field and expect it to hold its weight well if Dimir and Golgari continue to hover at the top tables. Recently, I've seen lists playing Negate maindeck instead of Phantom Interference to pivot from a permission spell into a hard counter, which I'd considered throughout the month. I'm still not a fan of Soul Partition. Exiling and delaying a problematic nonland permanent hasn't helped my continuity as opposed to playing Get Lost to straight up destroy something. Kiora, the Rising Tide has overperformed recently as another deviation, looting me through a lot of otherwise losing post-board games improving my hand into all sorts of situational Magic. As appealing as making an 8/8 is on the surface, the underlying flexibility this card offers feels underrated.

 Interestingly, the mana base is now typically showing 22 lands for a stock list instead of my 20. I would imagine that this is because players now want better chances of hitting land drops organically instead of needing to commit a Moment of Truth or Chart a Course early just to find lands. It's possible that I've avoided being punished like this by having the extra looter in Kiora, the Rising Tide, and embracing the early Chart a Course turns against the red matchups anyway in search of the early Helping Hand or Recommission. In a future event, I wouldn't mind trimming a counterspell for a 4th Floodfarm Verge.

 With that said, the grind is over and I can ride off into the sunset with two months left in the season. I'm not active on Twitter/X or Reddit, so if you have any thoughts on the deck or want to converse sideboarding, feel free to shoot me a DM on Discord at PrezKoumori. Special thanks to my Logic Knot teammates for the continued moral support throughout the season and to you for joining me in spirit on this journey of playing the game that we love.

 Good games everyone.

~ Prez Kuhnke

With the advent of a new RCQ season upon us, as well as a new Foundational standard set, there comes a new way to envision the meta around us. Additionally, the standard format as a whole over the past year has been better than any standard format since RTR-Theros, and I'll stand on that. There are many different playable decks playable at the moment, and I would say any one of these top 10 decks could potentially win an RCQ, but obviously the ones at the top will be the ones I feel are the best to get your tickets to Minneapolis and Hartford.

Here is the tier list, for those of you who want it, although we will go more in-depth deck by deck afterwards:

10. Azorius/Jeskai Convoke
9.  Boros Burn
8. Domain
7. Azorius Oculus
6. White Control
5. Temur Otters
4. Red Prowess
3. Golgari Midrange
2. Gruul Prowess
1. Dimir Midrange

Now for the in-depth breakdowns!

Tier 3: Good decks with Strong Niches

These are decks which will usually prey on rooms which either do not pack sideboard hate, or skew too much towards a specific archetype. They still have game in any matchup, but there are rooms where they will be a lot better- and a lot worse.

10. Azorius/Jeskai Convoke

Credit to teammate Ben Ejnes for this list. This deck has more consistent mana (in three colors) than it has in the past, and that, coupled with the best starts in the format and one of the most broken value generating creatures in Knight-Errant of Eos, make its game ones almost unbeatable, especially against black midrange decks. However, two major things stand in this deck's way: a plethora of sideboard answers, and terrible mana.  I would say that if you think your room will be inundated with black midrange decks cutting on their aggro hate to cannibalize each other, this deck is an excellent choice. However, if you think you will face a reasonably diverse metagame, especially one featuring  white control decks, or just decent sideboard cards against aggressive decks, this may not be the best option.

9. Boros Burn

Credit to my buddy Omar Valencia for this list. This is actually the most consistent of the red aggressive decks, card for card. It packs a lot of over-the-top damage, and tends to care the least about removal/boardwipes compared to the prowess-oriented variants. However, it suffers from a pronounced weakness, as do many of the decks in this tier: it has virtually no real answer to recursive life-gain. While this may sound like something which is not normally a huge deal, magic design over the past few years has made recursive life-gain a huge part of most premier formats. This includes standard, with cards like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, and Ritual Annex, Carrot Cake, and the like keeping traditional burn decks down. However, if you find rooms without Golgari midrange, Mono-White Control, or sideboard cards that shore up burn matchups, then this deck can absolutely crush a room.

8. Domain

This deck is... weird. There are a lot of cards which simultaneously do nothing in some matchups, and everything in others. This leads to the classic "Oh, I drew the wrong half of my deck" problem in some matchups, but there are also matchups where you win because you are simply playing a lot of busted mythics and rares with synergy on top. That being said, what really keeps this deck from being positioned higher is an extreme weakness to mono-red/red aggressive variants, which often just plow through the deck before it can really get its engines going. I do think there is something to be said for this deck being exploitative of skill edges, in that if you are better than your opponents, you will get outsized mileage from this deck in build and in play, but I still can't seriously recommend it because of its issues with aggression.

7. Azorius Oculus

This has been a pet deck of mine for a while, and with the upgrades Abhorrent Oculus and Founding the Third Path have provided recently, the deck is more fun than ever. But we'd be kidding ourselves if we didn't recognize the decks biggest issues: consistency and sideboard cards. This deck wins a lot of game ones, particularly against midrange decks, and even post-board games if the black decks elect to cheat on copies of Anoint with Affliction. But cards like Ghost Vacuum, Anoint, Sunfall, and Archfiend of the Dross can be very difficult for this deck to beat, despite how good a lot of its matchups may feel pre-board. That said, if your room is skimping on graveyard hate, or if you're just high rolling the entire day, this deck can really get there pretty easily. There are a lot of powerful cards, and you get a lot of interaction for much cheaper than many other decks.

6. White Tokens

Credit to Zane Toledo for this list, you can check out his social media here, or his YouTube channel here, he's an excellent player. This archetype is reminiscent of a similar mono-white control deck which made waves in 2022 back when Grixis and Rakdos midrange strategies were dominant in the format.  As with that version, this deck has risen to beat up black midrange strategies, however, unlike last time this deck was good, the format is not inundated with those types of decks. Don't get me wrong, the black decks are good, and popular, but I think you would be hard-pressed to say outright they are definitely the best decks in the format to the extent the Vampires strategies were back in the day. This token strategy plays with an amount of value most midrange decks will never be able to contest with, however, it does have pronounced weaknesses to decks which punish the amount of wheelspinning and setup it has to do to get their engines online. This means weaknesses to the red and red-x Prowess decks, as well as tempo-oriented draws from blue decks, as it can struggle against countermagic. I would play this in rooms heavily inundated with GB midrange, or to a lesser extent, the UB flash deck. It has game against most creatures, but I still wouldn't recommend playing this in a room full of prowess decks.

Tier 2: Strong decks, less weaknesses

You can win with these in any room, but it may be more difficult than the tier 1 strategies, seeing as they have less agency in their poor matchups.

5. Temur Otters

This deck is WILD. Also, for credit reasons, I stole this particular list from HexdrinkerMTG, you can follow his social media here, and his YouTube channel here.  I think this archetype likely has the most room for skill expression of any deck on this list, which is not necessarily a good or bad thing in a vacuum... although I supposed we don't usually play magic in a vacuum. That being said, this deck has a lot going for it. It plays a reasonable amount of removal for the aggressive decks, This town ain't Big Enough is at an all-time-high of viability at the moment, and it operates as an control-combo deck rather than a spell-density or two-piece combo deck, where eventually it will just find the pieces to go off even if it doesn't have the speed of other combo archetypes. It also does not need to "go infinite" in order to kill. That being said, its combo package is so heavy it struggles to play enough interaction to keep up with decks that demand it, which means trouble with aggressive decks and aggressive curves from midrange decks. On the other hand, it shines against control decks, or decks which struggle to kill in general. I would play this if your room is inundated with heavy midrange or decks like the Monowhite deck, or if you feel like you have a massive skill edge against a given room.

4. Red Prowess

Mono-red Prowess is just a good solid aggro deck, playing on axes different from red decks in the past with their pump spells and valiant triggers. And its strong. Really strong. That being said, while strong overall and in a general sense, it can still be attacked on a fair axis and lose, seeing as it rarely gets all the way over with burn spells alone, meaning if its creatures don't do damage, the deck probably won't be able to push it. Sideboard games are also interesting, seeing as if the deck can protect an Urabrask's Forge, it often wins the game off of that card alone. The only serious drawback  to this deck is its lack of options due to being monocolored.

Tier 1: Strong decks, all weaknesses are able to be played through

All of these decks have far better spreads than the previous tier, however, they each happen to have one pronounced weakness which they will struggle with, even if they can play through them. Telltale of a good format, in my opinion, especially in standard.

3. Golgari Midrange

I've played a lot of this deck as well.  Green has a lot of powerful removal right now (WoTC smoking crizzack for that one) in Tear Asunder, Pawpatch Formation, Tranquil Frillback, and Vivien Reed, and the black demon package is just very strong. That, coupled with black removal being at a relative high compared to it's white counterpart, has allowed this deck to become the second most represented in the meta. It has a significantly more polarized matchup spread than midrange decks of the past, however, with definitive weaknesses against Temur Otters as well as Dimir Midrange, while having very good matchups against almost the entirety of the rest of the metagame, with a particular emphasis on its red aggressive matchup being very very strong. I would heavily recommend playing this deck if there is just no Dimir in your area.

2. Gruul Prowess

This is the deck I have played the second most during this season, and it is an incredible piece of work. Monstrous Rage is contextually one of the strongest pump spells in standard, ever. The deck has a lot of reach, everything is aggressively costed, and Questing Druid is literally Ancestral Recall. I haven't missed a top 8 playing this deck yet, but it does have weaknesses. While you would figure the Beza decks such as Domain and mono-White would be problematic, the deck that actually crushes red is, as previously mentioned, Golgari. Every top 8 match I have lost so far has been to that deck, and while the matchup is winnable, there is clearly some work to be done in the sideboard to fix it.

1.Dimir Midrange

One of my buddies probably put it best: "Decks that have the most moves are decks that tend to be really good, and I think Dimir has the most moves by a lot." The amount of plays, answers, and threats this deck has are so diverse in terms of how they operate on board and from the hand that it feels impossible to play around all of them. In other competitive games (particularly fighting games), this amount of option select/access is referred to as "coverage." Any move the opponent makes, Dimir can potentially cover/counter in different ways, and making Dimir's answers wrong is a lot harder than being wrong yourself. Operating largely at instant speed, the deck is basically a pile of efficient answers backed up by eight good cards, namely 4 copies of both Enduring Curiosity and Kaito, Bane of Nightmares, both of which draw you a TON more of those answers. Good pile. Excellent pile. Potentially even... best pile?

I don't know how to end this article. You should probably play red if you're defaulting and not experienced in the format, Dimir as you get deeper. I like all the decks. Standard is in the best spot its been in for YEARS if not a decade outright at the moment. I have enjoyed the RCQ season, and will continue to grind it out.

#ILiterallyCannotBelieveImPlayingStandardAgainAndLegitimatelyEnjoyingIt

-Kazi Baker

The Wanderer, Kaito, and Nashi find themselves walking into the House of Horrors, where for some reason Mothman runs the joint and they can't escape. But, Kaito's still unplayable so at least we have that to find solace in.

The following is a quick review of the set for those going into pre-release this weekend! Cards are always hard to evaluate going into a brand new format, but I hope this helps you get a visual on what to expect! Most importantly, good luck and have fun this weekend!

From WOTC we have a few new mechanics:

• Eerie - this ability is linked to enchantments, usually a triggered ability when an enchant enters or a enchantment room is unlocked.

• Survivor - an X ability that triggers at the start of your second main phase (because post combat main phase was too confusing I guess) with an "if the creature with the ability is tapped" on the text.

• Impending - a keyword that has the card enter as just enchantments for a cheaper cost that eventually turn into a creatures. A time counter is removed at the start of the end step (why can't they keep this consistent..) Once the last counter is removed its a creature.

• Delirium - (not new, but returning) Why did WOTC say this was a new mechanic? Anyways.. cards gain value by having four or more types in your graveyard.

• Manifest Dread - (not... really new) A variation of Manifest, Cloak, whatever you want to call it but operates "differently" by looking at the top 2 cards of your library, then you put one into the graveyard and one onto the battlefield as a 2/2 face down card (so colorless, no types, no abilities and no mana cost) that can get turned face up at anytime. Split second anyone?

• Rooms - a new enchantment type with 2 sides. (they look like a split card) Each card side has its own casting cost, and both "sides" are put onto the battlefield. You can pay the mana cost on the other side to "unlock" the room and "activate" the other half that's cast. You cannot cheat these into play and if they are put into play without being cast both rooms will be locked.

Duskmourn Features 10 Dual-Color Mechanics/Archetypes

• These are not as set-in-stone as Bloomburrow
• This allows for much more flexibility between archetypes and splashing

Each archetype has a "signpost" uncommon that links the "obvious" mechanics in each two color pair

• Eerie Tempo (UW) revolves around enchantments. Uses Eerie triggers and Rooms. The whole set revolves around enchantments, including the new "Rooms". Although this strategy is based around enchantments, it focuses on overwhelming the board with a classic white creature strat between glimmers and enchantment creatures. If you were to splash a third color, it will benefit most from red, since that strat (red/blue) revolves around rooms.

• Eerie Control (UB) - trying to use Rooms as long term "eventually this will end the game" and Eerie triggers that take over the game. They aim to control with counterspells and bounce effects to trigger Eerie in many ways. Same as UW, the UB decks can benefit from a red splash for more eerie triggers and damage based removal.

• Sacrifice (RB) -  A midrange value strat that cares about sacrificing creatures and enchantments. A lot of the synergistic pieces in these colors either reward you for sacrificing or do something when sacrificed. You'll even find a few cards that reward you with a gain and drain effect. Red allows for a lot of the small creatures to sacrifice while if splashing a color, white offers reanimation effects to benefit even more of sacrifices.

• Delirium Stompy (RG) - with the power of RG and dreams the fast stompy delirium deck will run over your opponent faster than any other archetype in the format. Make sure to include things in your deck like terramorphic expanse, artifacts, ect to enable delirium as fast as possible. Black is your best splash color to help with enabling delirium.

• Survival (GW) - Another aggressive strat that uses combat trucks and pumps to get through combat and tap creatures down. This archetype will be difficult to implement as it cares about your creatures living (and being tapped) in your second main phase. The baseball bat should often be used to tap your own creatures for the survival mechanic to be enabled without them dying in combat. Red is likely the best splash for this mechanic to help in regards to combat tricks.

• Reanimator (WB) - middle ground between both Eerie strats, and reanimates things... It's super important to have an enabler (like possessed goat) to be able to discard your big creatures, otherwise its likely in this format that you'll lose before you can hard cast the big monsters. I am not sure what splash is best for this archetype, but assume that blue may help buy time before you can set up with its counters and bounce effects. Similarly red could do the same with all its damage based removal.

• Rooms (UR) - completely all in on Rooms and leans towards a more controlling strat. Landing many rooms to benefit in the end game is the goal. I am not overly impressed with blue as a stand alone color and believe that red will really carry this archetype to victory. Since UR cares so much about rooms, a white splash for impactful rooms will likely help this archetype the most.

• Delirium Grind (GB) - slow grindy midrange that cares about delirium. GB has a lot of strong synergy that cares about card types in the graveyard. Just like GR, trying to get delirium as fast as possible will make for the best strat to end the game. The best color splash is for red, Jund which are the colors that all care about delirium in the set.

• Aggro (WR) - An aggro color pairing centered around small creatures and "toys". White and red have the strongest removal in the set, making this archetype one of the scariest in my opinion in the set. A lot of cards create tokens or benefit off tapping a lot of creatures to gain value. Red has the best game finishers in the set that are castable, and making this archetype work will be easy. Black is the strongest splash for this combination, as it easily makes tokens to benefit off the sacrifice found in RB.

• Manifest Dread (UG) - midrange manifest dread. Seems to be the least supported as UG usually is. There are many cards that either just manifest dread themselves or benefit from you doing so. Green seems to have the most of this, where are blue is full of counters and bouncing. I would not play this archetype unless your pool forces you to. Black or red would likely be the most beneficial splash as the removal in UG is light, or pretty much non-existent.

Top 9 for each Color - Duskmourn "Bombs" and Staples

• White - Has the best unconditional removal in the set. Strong mechanics for both UW and RW, and I believe it will prove to be the third best color overall.

• Blue - my vote for worst color in the set. It was difficult to select a full 9 impactful cards but can shine great in dual archetypes. My opinion being that UW is likely the best pair for playing blue but I would chose other colors first.

• Black - full of removal, reanimation, and a small amount of impactful threats. I do not think as a stand alone color that black is one of the best, probably the second worst altogether. Strong synergy cards with its other color will be important and I do believe this color will still have a high impact because of the removal.

• Green - Probably the second strongest color in the set. Solid threats and curve out cards with ramp. I do think green will prove to be among the strongest colors paired with red and black specifically.

• Red - my choice for strongest color in the set. Full of impactful threats on curve with solid game ending threats. Fast and full of damage based removal to overwhelm your opponents quickly.

• Multicolor - these are a few multi-color cards that have strong synergies in their respective color.

Combat Tricks

Always important to know for the limited format what is available in each color

Note: Exile Based Removal

The new rare cycle come back as enchantments if they die, so there's a few ways to get rid of them permanently. Also stops you contributing to your opponents delirium!

As my last bit, a visual on removal in the set!

Special Guests.. the Playable

Thank you for checking out our first foray into limited content! Hopefully this helps, and please feel free to provide us feedback, we would love to hear from you! We usually focus on constructed content, but we feel we need to emphasize limited a bit more, seeing as the only format through-line for each RCQ season is, in fact, limited. Thank you for reading!

Leave a comment about how you would built this!

-Lexi Christensson

RIP Nadu, long live The One Ring. After our first week of Nadu-less modern, we finally get to talk about what the format looks like way too early, and with the most measured possible and most nuanced takes. For those of you who do not want to read breakdowns, you are more than welcome to go ahead and take a look at the Team Logic Knot power rankings for the top 10 below.

Tier 2: Trash decks that don't play ring good
10. Domain Zoo
9. Ruby Storm
8. Yawg
7. Jeskai Energy
6. Dimir Murktide

Tier 1: Goated Ring Decks
5. Amulet Titan
4. Tron
3. Eldrazi Breach
2. Mardu Energy
1. Boros Energy

Now for a more in-depth look.

We write these pieces with the limited data we have, but also operate with the understanding there are simply differences in online and paper metagames. Most of our online/numerical data will be sourced from mtgdecks.net, and you can use this page as a good jumping off point yourself. However, the ultimate decider in our rankings is usually just based on vibes and theoretical assessment, as well as allowances for things like deck difficulty, metagame dependencies, and other factors highlighted in each profile. In other words, the closer to number 1 a deck is, the more we recommend taking it to your RCQs.

Tier 4: Serious Metagame Callouts

10. Domain Zoo

This prehistoric pile of cards still has some game... but its pronounced weakness to most ring decks leaves a lot to be desired. While its classic (it's like 6 months old, can we say classic?) Leyline of the Guildpact into Scion of Draco start is still nearly impossible for the WRx Energy shells to beat, everything else the deck does is also unfavored in those matchups. However, the deck does shine in a metagame of older or less powerful decks, preying on archetypes like Yawg, Murktide, Wizards variants, and even the Jeskai Control deck to an extent. That being said, I cannot truly recommend this deck unless you plan on dodging the Ring and energy the entire day.

9. Ruby Storm

A "game one" deck in the truest sense, this deck is less of a metagame callout in its matchup spread overall, but moreso in how it is nearly unbeatable unless you pack hate for it. The issue here is that hate is frequent and pops up often enough to make the deck almost nonviable unless nobody expects anything like this to pop up. Its matchup spread is pretty decent across the board, but in an individual tournament you will find it significantly more polarized depending on sideboard configurations - and it only takes one deck to beat you in top 8 to miss on your qualification.

Tier 3: Justifiable, but With Weaknesses

8. Yawgmoth

There are so many different versions of this deck right now it is hard to highlight only one. Still, the tournament gameplan has remained the same for a while. Beat up on the slower creature or blue decks, lose to everything else that goes over the top, doesn't play to the board, or (God forbid), interacts positively with your plan. This deck did receive sidegrades in MH3, giving it alternative dig options such as Chithonian Nightmare, Malevolent Rumble and Birthing Ritual, as well as critters such as Marionette Apprentice giving more viable win conditions which power out your Chord of Callings while furthering your dorky midrange boardstate. That being said, even with all the new cards, none of them really changed what the deck is good or bad against. You still beat big blue package decks like Murktide, can usually hold your own against Energy, and lose to the big mana ring decks (and now Ruby Storm, if you play Yawg pray to dodge that). The only real change is Jeskai now being significantly better against Yawg due to better boardwipes and Phlage. That being said, this is still a deck you can get an awful lot out of with a lot of reps and practice. Shoutout MeatMTG and AwesomPossum on MTGO for contributing to Yawg supremacy in Southern California.

7. Jeskai Energy

This is our first Ring deck, and our only Ring deck that is not in the top two tiers of the list. Why? Well, unlike every other Ring deck, Jeskai is incapable of both powering the Ring out or backing it up with oodles of mana or tons of pressure once it is online. It is still playing behind the Ring with free interaction and Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury. That being said, it is a Ring deck, and therefore has a high floor. Its ceiling requires build variance to try and beat either Energy or Eldrazi decks based on what you feel like will be more present in your given meta. That said, Counterspells and boardwipes are still a decent way to get things done, especially with creature decks being prevalent, but as usual with control, you only get to cover so many bases.

6. Dimir Murktide

I like this deck a lot. I play it myself. I even won an RCQ with it.

This deck has a lot of holes. The biggest issue is that it is really good at grinding down to one or two cards, but if those one or two cards are ineffective, you are essentially left trading resources. This play pattern may feel familiar to UR Murktide players, but the issue is significantly less pronounced due to our new friend, Psychic Frog. Frog is the answer to almost everything in the deck, dominating boards, generating card advantage, operating as an excellent topdeck, and often dodging removal and closing games on its own. Unfortunately, the deck is heavily reliant on drawing its win conditions before running dry of resources, or else it often gets out-valued by The One Ring. Psychic Frog is probably the best turn 2 play in the entire format. If you like tempo, I would recommend this deck, because it operates as a tempo deck, but very much on the opposite end of the more aggressive UR shells, being closer to a Jund shell of years past in that your threats often require a lot more commitment than the cheaper UR threats. Outside of that, the deck plays a reasonable amount of classically medium and medium plus cards, which we will call "skill expressive" to make myself feel better about playing bad cards.

Tier 2: Ring-Centric/abusive decks

5. Amulet Titan

This deck suffered a LOT from the presence of Nadu in the format. However, in the Aftermath (analyst), it has found a home again. New builds have been experimenting with an Aftermath Analyst package to go alongside their traditional Primeval Titan package, which gives them a lot more esoteric lines to win the game (I guess, I've never bothered watching them finish it feels voyeuristic). This deck is a strong as ever, abuses the ring in a unique way from other decks, using it to dig for pieces rather than value in and of itself, and also just has extremely explosive starts. That being said, it has very VERY pronounced weaknesses in the classic anti-titan/big mana cards, such as Counterspell, Blood Moon, Subtlety, Magus of the Moon, Dress Down, and the brand-new Harbinger of the Seas. Unfortunately for the Titan deck, all of these cards are very prevalent, but with the Ring in tow, it can play through almost anything as long as it isn't taking lethal damage. This is another deck that comes with a bit of caution: while very very strong, I would not recommend picking this up and going into an RCQ cold. It does take time and repetition to really get a lot out of this deck, less so in learning combo (although you should definitely do that), and more in how to play around things and when to just jam.

4. Tron

Tron good.

Specifically, the additions of Devourer of Destiny, both as a removal spell and new version of Once Upon a Time, combined with the absurd modality and power level of Kozilek's Command and acceleration of Sewing Mycospawn and Ugin's Labyrinth have resurrected the archetype yet again. The biggest difference between this Tron list and those of years past is the ability to power out four drops on turn two, all of which are extremely disruptive or powerful (or both). It is also a Ring deck, and therefore carries the significantly high floor of one, while also being very abusive of the cards you can amass by generating enough mana to potentially cast all of them depending on circumstance. Also, for the first time in a very long time, Tron has a lot of decision-making in its gameplay, lending a high skill ceiling along with the Ring's higher power floor. That said, it is still one of the more straightforward decks in the format, having an easily executed gameplan, which does matter. All in all, I think this is an excellent deck to bring to your RCQs if you have access to it. Also, shoutout Ivan Espinoza for more SoCal dominance, winning the SCG Tampa $10k with this list.

3. Eldrazi Breach

This deck takes the turn two/turn three ideas behind new tron iterations and asks "what if we ALWAYS did the busted stuff on those two turns?" Through the Breach is the linchpin of this strategy, exchanging top-end for turning the combo nature of the deck up to 11. The deck often clears all of your permanents on turn 3, after ramping on turn 2. It also receives a bit of a boost, despite its relative lack of consistency, due to its top end matching up almost perfectly against the Energy decks, often keeping up until it can force someone to sacrifice their entire board to an All is Dust,  Ulamog, the Defiler, or Emrakul, the Promised End. Kozilek's Command also serves an even more powerful role in this deck, often bridging it to hard-cast these threats on "dead" turns by basically doubling mana, thereby actually giving it a pretty reasonable amount of late-game potential despite shaving on so many traditional GTron top-end cards.

Tier One: Decks so good they only play like, Two Rings

2. Mardu Energy

Mardu Energy evolved as a counterpart to Boros energy which was focused on beating Boros Energy (and also Nadu), and still maintains that role. While it is extremely powerful, it is slightly less linear than Boros while also having significantly worse mana. Those two major differences are enough to make it ever so slightly worse, as having more options is usually a good thing, but in this metagame having poor mana can potentially be a death knell when you have to take turn one or two off due to a tapland, or die to Harbinger/Moons running around. That being said, Ob Nixilis, the Adversary is an excellent tool in what would otherwise be a relatively poor control matchup, and Orcish Bowmasters invalidates half of the Boros openers on its own. This deck does operate slightly slower than most Boros lists, but shares a lot of the same lines and potential, while also slotting The One Ring just a bit easier than the Boros lists due to a slightly stronger and more flexible suite of cards. But if it beats Boros, why not play this instead of Boros? Put simply, this deck, due to its flexibility and lack of Blood Moon, can be hard to play. The mana can be tough, this many taplands is a bit hard, you lack the one drops Boros usually has, and overall you are significantly less linear over the course of a given match. While that lack of linearity leaves more room for skill expression, it also leaves more room for failure. And considering how head-and-shoulders above the rest of the format these energy shells seem, I think the value proposition of more expression really only comes up against Boros and the mirror, and therefore, I personally would want the linear gameplan of Boros a bit more.

1. Boros Energy

Boros Energy has been a strong shell for a while now, being one of the few other viable decks while Nadu was around. The energy package (Ocelot Pride, Guide of Souls, Galvanic Discharge, and Amped Raptor) is highly efficient, producing very wide and somewhat tall boards very quickly. Back that up with value engines like The One Ring and Phlage, as well as lock pieces such as Blood Moon, and you have a recipe for a relatively straightforward and extremely strong pile of cards. The deck has nearly no real weaknesses, besides perhaps the Eldrazi Breach matchup, and is highly resilient especially as it packs more copies of the Ring in order to help it refill and maintain velocity. While it is a bit to early to call for bans, I did originally predict post-Nadu ban the next cards to require action would likely be (in no particular order) The One Ring, Grief, and the energy package in general. I think so far, while certainly not nearly as overrepresented at top tables as a deck like Nadu, Boros has certainly earned its crown for the best deck in the format.

#Grixis4Eva

-Kazi Baker

Hello all!

Although not necessarily in-season, Pioneer (and explorer) are both inundated with calls for bans, adjustments, etc. As we head into some early RC preparation (remember, Duskmourne does release before DC), I would like to explore what our next pseudo-rotation will look like.

August 26th is the next Ban announcement. The following screenshots are a summary of the state of the format.

This is... rough. Rakdos decks are more than a third of the format, which is insane. Amalia would be considered problematic based on meta share alone. Phoenix's share is that of what would normally be considered the best deck in a "healthy" format, but it is less than half of the actual most popular deck's. Between the three archetypes, we see a meta share of greater than 60%. Over the past 2 weeks, those numbers go up to over two-thirds of the format. These are Yu-Gi-Oh numbers, and are unacceptable in standard, let alone a competitive eternal format. I actually cannot remember the last time I saw a format this top-heavy and inbred. Even modern right now, in what is widely considered a tier-0 format, we do not see numbers this skewed towards the top decks.

But what does this mean for our banlist? Let's talk through each of the potential bans which I think could realistically take place on August 26th, by category.

Ban Tier 1:

Decks and cards which necessitate immediate action

Sorin, Imperious BloodLord

This is the easy first target on the list. Sorin has many issues, from unfun play patters, to power level, to splashability, as well as contributing heavily to the invalidation of traditionally aggressive archetypes in Pioneer. This card is seeing too much play at top tables, and is just enabling egregiously strong cards too early, while also limiting design space for future powerful high-cost creatures from the vampire type. All in all, it's literally just too strong.

Amalia Benavides Aguirre/Wildgrowth Walker

Amalia is another strong card, and albeit not seeing nearly as much play recently, but is still an egregious mistake. Broken creatures hold a special place in Pioneer, seeing as the format has Chord of Calling, and Amalia has proven to be the pinnacle of that. The deck also helps to invalidate traditionally agressive archetypes in a manner very similar to Sorin. Additionally, it also leads to really REALLY tough tournament logistics and play experiences due to its capacity to draw games out, forcing further games within a single match, as well as sometimes just killing you in a manner similar to Splinter Twin.

Wildgrowth Walker is not nearly as strong, but is the other half of the combo and relatively irreplaceable (I believe). Either one would likely remove the deck from the format, thereby revalidating aggressive strategies, and allowing for a significantly more open metagame.

Tier 2:

Cards which I believe will likely necessitate action in the future, whether that be on the 26th or later

Chord of Calling

This card has much less of a pedigree in this format than modern, however, access to copies 5-8 of the best creatures in your deck in exchange for no (or even reduced) mana is incredibly oppressive, and theoreticall could limit design space. What will actually happen is WoTC will continue to print broken creatures combos, and Chord will continue to make them far to consistent for the format.

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

I have been calling for this card to get banned for over a year, despite it carrying me to my first Pro Tour Invite. It has a few problems. First of all, the card is a bit too powerful for the format in my opinion. The worst case scenario for this upcoming banlist is Amalia and Rakdos receiving hits and then Nykthos remaining untouched, enabling Green storm to exist absent its natural predator (Amalia). Additionally, Nykthos games are just not fun. Since the inception of the format, even in weaker shells in different colors, Nykthos decks have always more or less had the gameplan of "draw Nykthos or die", Green decks just find it better and can ramp into something good enough to stall until they can access the card, while also accessing devotion itself very very effectively. The card being basically "draw it or die" devolves a lot of games into coin flips and, in my opinion, leads to unskilled gameplay where neither player has real agency over the outcome.

Picklock Prankster:

WoTC clearly loves Treasure Cruise, and I think we will start to figure out exactly how much in the near future, likely with the status of this card. As phoenix receives more and more tools (read as: cheap spells that replace/remove), this card will have to be put on the chopping block if WoTC wants to keep Cruise and Phoenix around. It's very much the best glue piece in the deck, and while it is fun, I think if we are powering down the format this card requires at the very least some very thorough inspection.

Tier 3:

WoTC will ban these if they want to outright rotate the format (or miss on the banlist)

Fable of the Mirror-Breaker

This card would be ubiquitous in the face of the above bans, and to an extent, already is. However, compared to where it was before the printings of Vein Ripper, many red decks lean a bit more agressive, and theoretically this card does not fulfill a niche in those decks nearly as much, with decks like Gruul becoming lower to the ground. That being said, it would still likely be present in Enigmatic/Fires strategies, Red midrange, Niv to Light, and Creativity. I personally think this would be a huge miss, but the card is likely still on the list of potential bans, albeit towards the bottom.

Vein Ripper

This would be the definition of a band-aid ban. While the other options are (currently) weaker, there are still other options. These may or may not see immediate play, but if this card is banned instead of Sorin, I am willing to bet eventually we will get a vampire which is good enough to warrant further action. Right now, the top-end without Ripper includes cards like Ghalta and Mavren, Blood Baron of Vizkopa, or Lord Xander, the Collector, all of which are at least decent when cheated in, if not as protected as the Ripper. My point is really that although this would likely help to rebalance the format, it would likely end up in a similar spot later down the line.

Treasure Cruise

Since the inception of the format, WoTC has made it clear that the best things you can do in the format are play Thoughtseize or Treasure Cruise. As a ceiling, this card usually receives much more attention, but with the format leaning so broken and so combo-centric at the moment, Treasure Cruise feels meager. This card is unlikely to get banned, but will continue to elicit complaints from people who don't like agency or would prefer their opponents not interact with them. This card should not see a ban, but sometimes WoTC gets to feeling like creatures are not already good enough, so we should ban all the instants and sorceries that draw cards because only creatures are allowed to draw cards.

I do hope for bans on the 26th. Ideally, I would prefer to see Sorin, Nykthos, and Amalia banned outright, no ifs, ands, buts, or concessions. I understand this would really shake up the format, but the fact is, the format has been stale for years at this point, with strategies centering around 3 shells (RB mid, UR spells, Nykthos) being at the top of the format since the Winota ban, with the occasional outside strategy (Greasefang, Amalia, etc.) popping up but eventually falling to the wayside except for Amalia holy shit please ban that deck WoTC I swear I am so tired...

sigh

The biggest benefit to the stability of that format is that it allowed for some amount of balance while also being unique in its makeup. Rather than the usual triangle of aggro, control, midrange, with the outside affect of combo, pioneer has often been made up of decks which modulate between all of the above. As cool as it is to have midrange-combo decks (amalia, vamps), or midrange control decks (phoenix), or aggressive combo decks (Green), the issue has arisen that the format's growth is making virtually everything a combo deck. I would argue that is just due to permanents doing too much, but that's another article. The fact is our aggro deck (vamps) is a combo deck, our midrange decks (also vamps, and amalia) are combo decks, our control deck (Phoenix) with the introduction of Proft's Eidetic Memory and Temporal Trespass being maintained is also just a combo deck, and the closest thing we have to an aggressive deck (Green) is definitely a combo deck that just happens to do 20 by turn 5 the natty way sometimes. The ubiquity of strategies doing things which go over the top by turn 5 has forced traditional aggressive strategies more or less out of the format, and the control decks are constantly walking the line of viability outright because having to account for so many different attack angles is nigh-impossible. As this has happened, decks have regressed more and more towards midrange soup splashing combos (except Amalia) because they need to be able to create value, and the best way to create value is to play good permanents or cast Cruises rather than interact with your opponent's plan. It almost feels like Yu-Gi-Oh of days past, where you and your opponent would both set up your best boards and then just bash into each other with the assistance of topdecks to try and work through it (nowadays in Yu-Gi-Oh, the player who goes first tries to set up, and then the other player has hand traps or f****** dies).

I think that the goal of this particular banlist should be to diversify this particular metagame. That being said, I think a lot of the issues in pioneer are endemic, as WoTC has printed more and more cards designed with strength in mind, with very little (or often no) downside protections or drawbacks. I am unsure if that characteristic of pioneer is "fixable", but I do look forward to a future where I will never have to play against Amalia Twin ever again.

#BanNykthos

-Kazi Baker

Hey y'all! Kazi here, writing for TheLogicKnot. As we all know, Nadu, Winged Wisdom is terrorizing the format and we are likely going to be dealing with it until August 26th at the least. That means the first 3 weeks of RCQ season, and a non-zero amount of premier events (such as MXP LA, holler at me if you see me), are going to take place in a format which has the specter of a ban looming over it. Let's talk about what we need to do in order to take down some RCQs, and what decks we can play that give us the best shots.

Let's break down Nadu just a bit. Nadu is a creature-centric combo deck which has a much better matchup against control than creature combo decks historically because of the amount of card advantage it generates, a highly accessible combo kill, and Urza's Saga. It also presents sufficient roadblocks to stop all-in aggressive decks from running it over. However, it does have a potential weakness to spell combo... although those decks are largely nonviable and the sideboard can be adjusted to beat those as well, if needed.

Overall as a deck, Nadu has been underrepresented online and, I would argue, in paper. Online is not very important to a discussion about paper tournaments, but it's reasonable to say online testing is difficult when the loops are unable to be represented or shortcut, which results in less play. As for paper, the under representation seems to be largely from two things: a reluctance to play the deck out of boredom; an unwillingness to buy into Shuko, a peak $33 uncommon from Kamigawa block, which even now at $10 is probably not worth owning; and most versions being on multiple copies of The One Ring. None of these would be damning on their own, although combined lead to the deck being played significantly less than you would assume the consensus best deck in the format would be. While not the best way to understand data, a couple 64-person 1ks have happened in SoCal since PTMH3, and each of those had less than 6 people in the room on Nadu.

Extrapolating (which is probably bad analysis but whatever, paper magic is weird), I think there are two options, and with them, two deck recommendations for winning an RCQ at the moment. Keep in mind the methodology in this next part can apply to decks beyond the two options I present, although I think these are the decks which best fulfill the outlined criteria.

First strategy: just dodge Nadu. I know, I know, just dodge the bad matchup, play against it in top 8, and then die. But the fact is, you don't get to take shots at invites without making top 8s in the first place. Increasing that number at the cost of your Nadu matches means you are trying to come out on top of variance, which is often a big ask. However, in these rooms without many people actually playing Nadu, it becomes somewhat more viable.

I think the best deck if you are dodging Nadu is Mono-Black Necrodominance with Rings. While the deck seems to be largely abysmal against Nadu itself, the deck also performs extremely well against almost every other deck in the format. While normally decks which lean on a specific single card have consistency issues, because of the massive amount of redundancy here (the deck gets effectively 8 copies of The One Ring), it is extremely hard to keep one of their win conditions from resolving. While each of the cards on its own is not necessarily the best, the massive volume of cards the deck can accrue is just not something any "fair" strategy in the format seems prepared to deal with.

Second strategy: play a deck with a 50% match up against Nadu (which is as good as you're realistically getting) and a high amount of skill expression and customization for a few of the other top decks in your field. Here, I would recommend one of the URx Wizards shells. Below is mine:

Quickly, to understand how I am applying my theory, my field has an abundance of Mardu Energy and Jeskai Control, while lacking Necrodominance, traditional Tron, Living End, and Nadu (to an extent, it still tops every event). Because of the field, I lowered the curve of my deck, smoothed out the manabase, and constructed a list that takes a lot of 50/50s (while having more blowouts in the sideboard), including a few main deck hedges for bad match ups, such as Go-Wide Energy decks. But the flexibility of this shell is the key; if you play against more Necrodominance, you can go up on Narsets and Teferis. If you need to beat Tron, you can play a blood moon build with extra countermagic. If you're worried about Titan, you can slot extra Subtlety, etc. etc. What I am really saying is this list isn't perfect, but it is what I would play in my local RCQs if I decided to go with this type of thought process. You should adjust it as needed, but the only way I think you can get 50/50s against Nadu at the moment is playing shells that start with 4 copies of Counterspell.

I understand Nadu is going to be banned in a few weeks. However, I also think losing 3 weeks of play just to wait for its inevitable ban would be less than optimal considering I have two RCs to qualify for next season. While I was considering taking the time off, after doing some workshopping and talking with other grinders in my area, I decided to attack the format rather than just fold to it, and I think these are some of the best ways to do so, short of experimenting. Stay tuned for any updates! I'm excited for modern season despite Nadu, and I think the ban will likely reinvigorate me further.

#DOMAINTRON

-Kazi Baker

FULL DISCLAIMER: I majored in political science and suck at math, but I'm trying my damn best here people. Additionally, this article was authored between the end of Day 2 of PT Amsterdam and directly following the top 8.

Nadu, Winged Wisdom just posted one of the best showings at a Pro Tour of any new card(s) ever. The deck is comparable to decks (and seasoned) headlined by both Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis and Eye of Ugin Eldrazi in terms of conversion rate to Day 2, and slightly behind Eldrazi and significantly ahead of Hogaak (although for context, Hogaak had not received its power up from a ban yet) in terms of top 8 finishes at its first Pro Tour.

But how did this happen, and how did it happen so quickly?

Since its preview before the release of Modern Horizon 3, Nadu has had a lot of hype around it. However, immediately following release, its challenge data seemed to be leaving a lot to be desired. According to mtggoldfish.com, in the lead up to the pro tour, Nadu sat below Boros Energy, Jeskai Control, and Ruby Storm in terms of meta share. Everyone knew Nadu was doing unfair things, although results seemed to indicate it was not as good as people initially thought.

Before jumping into Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3, I think it is important to delve into why the meta presented as it did beforehand. First and foremost, the deck was restrictively expensive and hard to source, seeing as it required 4 rares from a premium product, was in a color combination which was historically not known for being busted (without being banned), and maybe most importantly, required 2 to 4 of an uncommon from 20 years ago (shoutout Shuko) while also feeling like a deck warranting a ban. Additionally, the Nadu combo is notoriously click-intensive on MTGO, which has previously been seen to suppress broken decks which require too many actions, such as Pioneer Mono-Green with Karn, Ballista Heliod in Pioneer, or Devoted/Melira Combos in older modern formats. Most data pre-Pro Tour is pulled from online challenge results, showcases, and prelims. Up until about the 22nd of June, MTGtop8 suffered from similar issues, but an influx of paper events reported bumped up Nadu's presence, albeit still not to an alarming level. This, combined with a lack of consensus and the general slow pace of the modern metagame in paper, likely led to the lack of Nadu results.

Now, for the PT itself.

Let's start with Day 1. Nadu enters the tournament with a total representation of 25.5% of the room (62 players between Bant and 4c Nadu). This is higher than Eldrazi (about 8%, the deck was kept well under wraps pre-Pro Tour) and Hogaak (21.4%) and lower than Junk (28.3%, PT Fate Reforged, the last Pro Tour with Splinter Twin in the format). As a caveat, it is worth noting Junk at PT FRF was categorized differently than we name decks today, with more build diversity in the deck than even the differences between 3 and 4 color Nadu, including decks across archetypes with aggressive, midrange, and even control variants. I would venture so far as to say Junk was more of an archetype than a deck outright.

These numbers are well within reason for very strong decks, but still slightly alarming, especially considering this is a relatively linear and uninteractive combo deck, which implies it would be picked by people who feel the edge gained from playing the deck is greater than playing a deck which may allow more expression of skill in a room of the most skilled players in the world. While impressive, these numbers by themselves do not NECESSITATE alarm, although they should put us on alert heading into...

Day 2, or, when things fall apart.

Nadu posts an 80.6% conversion rate.

It means Nadu has posted the highest Day 2 conversion rate of the most popular deck at a modern PT ever.

This is about the same conversion rate as Eldrazi at Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch (it was hard to find accurate numbers for this, and if anyone can point me to actual coverage/numbers, please send them my way and I will update this) while seeing 2.5x the amount of play. This is also significantly higher than Hogaak's rate at Mythic Championship 4 (71.4%) while still seeing about 25% more play. Compared to the Junk archetype mentioned at PT Fate Reforged, it saw slightly less play (but remember, Junk was a significantly more diverse archetype with much more build variance) but was significantly higher on conversion rate (compared to 63.3%). This is the time to hit the panic button. Adjusting for conversion rate above average, Nadu performed at about 132% the conversion rate of the entire tournament, whereas decks like Eldrazi hit 134% (again with significantly less play), Hogaak hit 126%, and the Junk archetype was at 100%.

Lastly, we should address post-swiss numbers. Nadu ended up with:

Day 1 share: 25.3%

Day 2 Share: 31%

Top 64 Share: 45%

Top 32 Share: 59%

Top 16 Share: 63%

Top 8 Share: 63%

You may notice something about these numbers, namely, as the field narrows, Nadu gains a higher percentage of metagame share. Which is also an alarming metric. It indicates as more and more matches are played, Nadu is more and more successful, and skews towards winning more. Obviously, this would just indicate a deck is very good, but I believe this has not happened since (or outside of) PT Oath of the Gatewatch, and again, Eldrazi started with a meta share of 8% instead of 25%.

If you showed up to this PT on a given deck competitive in the meta, theoretically, you could expect to top 8 3.3% of the time. If you showed up to this PT, and you were playing Nadu, your top 8 conversion rate would be 8.1%. If you were not playing Nadu, your top 8 conversion rate (for all other decks on average) became 1.7%.

Lets think about this in contrast to Eldrazi at its first Pro Tour, which is conceptually about as broken, if not slightly more so, according to these numbers, and significantly more definitive of the following format than any other deck in Modern history outside of Hogaak and perhaps Uro piles (and ignoring modern's start when Cloudpost, Blazing Shoal, and friends were legal for that short month or so).

First and foremost, the numbers are more or less the same in terms of conversion rates, even if the actual presence of Nadu going in was much higher. Eldrazi's conversion rates are actually slightly higher when taken as one archetype (which I have done throughout the article, same for Nadu). But this does present a stark difference in terms of how "broken" these decks are. There are two major arguments as to which one is more problematic.

The argument for Eldrazi is that its significantly lower play rate and therefore relatively ridiculous top 8 conversion rate mean that it is actually more broken, as more decks were in the top 8. In other words, it was relatively stronger as evidenced by its absurd overall win rate compared to its low play rate, lack of knowledge, and what would later be noted as a lack of refinement as the deck switched to be predominantly Red/Green and Blue/White in the following months. Nadu exists on the opposite end of the spectrum. It was a known quantity, builds are relatively similar across the board (at least in the main), and people anticipated this deck being strong despite its middling online results. Yet it still wins at an astounding rate on both days of the Pro Tour, posting unheard of win rates for the sample size. Arguments for both sides are valid, especially because Eldrazi also has more history to reflect on due to warping an entire format or two around it before bans slowed it down and time eventually passed it by until MH3.

ANYWHO, HERE SOME NUMBERS.

That's probably not okay. Ban this card.

Now, let's break down the card itself a bit more, top down. We will start with the cost.

Nadu costs one generic, one blue, and one green mana. This is relatively unobjectionable, although Green is a good color for getting things into play on turn two, it will matter more in the next section. It is relatively cheap, and we will also say here that it is a bit overstatted for the cost.

Nadu is a Legendary Bird Wizard Creature, which again, while relatively innocuous, does come with some things to say. First and foremost, the "legendary" supertype means it synergizes with Delighted Halfling, which lets it hit the stack turn two as well as making it all but guaranteed to hit the battlefield as well if cast off of the Halfling. Being a creature means it has inherent value and is also tutorable. Wizard is also technically relevant, but we have not seen shells in this color pair which care about that particular type (nor do I anticipate we will). It is also a creature, so it comes with most of the traditional weaknesses of a creature, in theory.

Nadu has 3 power and 4 toughness. While 3 power is largely irrelevant in its current play patterns, it does mean that even if locked out of combo potential, it is a legitimate threat, often posing a 6 turn clock in with evasion (7 from a goldfish, but it's fair to expect your OP to take some damage from their lands in modern). 4 toughness is more important, as 3 damage is a common format breakpoint for one mana red removal, meaning it either trades for two or more mana or requires a sorcery speed answer, neither of which is particularly tenable considering how explosive the card is and how much value it tends to provide its controller when removed. It also means they conveniently bounce off each other in combat, which means mirrors are "fun and interactive"™.

Now for the real problem the text box. Flying? Sure, whatever dude. Ability that not only enables combo, but also allows it to almost always trade up with removal? Sweet. Slap it on. Removal is literally a crime (Source: WOTC 2024 comp rules update for OTJ). It draws cards? Yes, but in order to make it dodge restrictions on drawing cards, lets make it not draw cards. Also drawing lands feels bad, but you know what feels good? Putting them directly on the battlefield. And I doubt we'll have room to say the word "untapped", so we'll just leave it out of the file, it seems inconsequential. Shuko and Outrider en-Kor may already combo with it, but we should reprint Sylvan Safekeeper into the format just in case it isn't already safe enough/loaded up with enough combo pieces. Springheart Nantuko feels like icing on the cake. The ability is clearly most of the issue with the card, but the rest of it being good is also extremely relevant as to exactly how broken it is.

But how does this add up to ban-worthy past the numbers? Well first and foremost, numbers aside, Nadu is very, very hard to actually hate out. Most of the "hate" for Nadu would simply stop the card from hitting the battlefield, and in a format with Chord of Calling that is extremely hard to do. Even traditional answers that are historically unplayable, like Nevermore, or historically good, like Meddling Mage, don't stop the Chord plan. Additionally, there are few answers to activated abilities which aren't either too narrow, such as Pithing Needle, or also overcosted, such as Linvala, Keeper of Silence. Creatures in general lack much actual "hate" considering they all draw cards upon entering the battlefield nowadays, or have ward (or some analogue) or recursion. That's a larger argument, but Nadu's ability prevents people from positvely interacting with the card itself, and the diversity of its combo suite prevents entirely shutting down the other parts of the combos with the card.

Nadu also has templating which requires unique tracking, in that it gives all creatures abilities which trigger twice with no real way to actually tell what has happened. This opens the card up to tracking issues with figuring out how many creatures have been targeted, and most alarmingly, opportunities to cheat. This happened on camera at the Pro Tour, and although it was likely as honest mistake (and usually will be), cards should not be designed in a way which makes it so easy to mess up the game state, or worse, cheat.

Lastly, Nadu is not fun. At least not for me. I like interacting with my opponent, decision making, and takings risks which have proportional rewards. Nadu is virtually incapable of being interacted with positively. Considering it replaces itself upon use, it has very linear play patterns which all either involve winning the game or drowning your opponent in triggers and critters until they just kind of fold. Most importantly to me, Nadu has no drawbacks. It's all upside. There is no timing where interaction works positively outside of maybe the stack (see Delighted Halfling). Because of how priority works in MTG, the controller is basically guaranteed 2 cards even if you do have interaction, and god forbid they have protection because then the cycle just repeats. There is no point at which you look at Nadu and say "man, I could be at risk of falling behind if I resolve this now."

So, we see all the reasons to get rid of it (win rate, issues with logistics and gameplay, play patterns, etc.), but are there reasons WotC would consider not banning Nadu?

Well, dear reader, I am just not optimistic about the pattern of bans WotC has showed us in the past when it comes to modern. With Eldrazi, they hit it after 6 months. With Hogaak, it took multiple bans. Oko/OUAT/Uro/Field Pile took almost a year to everything clear out. Even decks based around Mox Opal and Splinter Twin were far past their peaks when they were excused from the format. While I do not think Nadu is necessarily driving MH3 sales as some cards in the past have been (looking at you, Fury and Oko), I do think WotC has a habit of banning around problematic cards before hitting the card itself. I think with Nadu we will see something akin to Yu-Gi-Oh's Firewall Dragon, a card which combo'd with a ham sandwich and was around for far, far too long while everything around it was banned for its sins. We actually have precedent for this behavior as well, through archetypes like Hogaak and Vintage Shops. I do think Nadu eventually will be banned. Just not immediately. And that idea does make me worried about the health of the format, and specifically my place in it.

I hate to leave on such a sour note. Pro Tours should be celebrations of MTG, and as a modern player who loves the format at large, I want to feel happy during our annual flagship event. But this one has just been bittersweet. There are plenty of cool new toys in the format, but also significantly more cards which I think get away from some of the nuts and bolts of the game which I love so much. Nadu is particularly egregious, and unless we figure something out soon to combat it, I think it will need to go before the modern RCQ season starts up this summer.

#BanTheBird

-Kazi Baker

Numbers taken from multiple time challenge-winner Thief_of_Crowns and his secret cabal of Green worshippers.

Hey all! Team Logic Knot and friends here. We have really enjoyed the high-quality content of other creators and their power ranking listicles with thoroughly researched, well analyzed, and super deep content and writing, so we here at Team Logic Knot (and friends) have put together some of our own rankings following the 6-13-24 challenges won by contributors Thief_of_Crowns and MandrillMan!

S Tier

This is the cream of the crop, the best of the best, the busted decks, the may need to be banned ones, the Lotus Breaches, the Karn Storms, the Inverter decks, etc. et al.

Mono-Green Devotion

Note: There are also supposed to be four Invasion of Ixalan, but the deckbuilder doesn't like invasions.

This is the best deck in the format. We aren't actually sold on the sideboard being correct, as a matter of fact it probably is outright incorrect, but hey, a work in progress (and still putting up disgusting numbers).

A Tier

These are the other playable decks in the format, they are usually powerful strategies which have the capability of beating S tier decks.

Amalia

This deck sports a very impressive 52.72% wr against Mono-Green. It's incredibly powerful, and having a gameplan which is usually outright faster pre-board is extremely strong against decks like mono-green which can take a little bit of time to properly ramp up, especially seeing as Mono-green's best defense against most decks (its creature base) doesn't really do anything here. This is an extremely strong selection, and likely is worthy of being taken to any RCQ as long as you know how to pilot the deck well, especially against more interactive matchups.

B Tier

These are solid decks, which tend to target the S Tier or A tier, but usually can't do both or suffer from serious consistency issues.

...

C Tier

These decks suck. I would not recommend playing theses at almost any tournament, and therefore will not provide lists. They all have major weaknesses to the top decks of the format.

Red(green) Aggro

This deck sports an impressive 43% winrate against Mono-Green.

Rakdos Vampires

This deck sports an impressive 42% against Mono-Green.

Phoenix

36% against Mono-Green

UW Control

33.3% against Mono-Green

Waste Not

23% against Mono-Green

Spirits

23% against Mono-Green

Niv 2 Light

22% against Mono-Green

You should play Mono-Green.

#CTier

-Kazi Baker